The Big Storm of June 29, 2012

The evening of June 29, 2012 brought a big storm here which the weather forecasters called a derecho.  It brought high winds of up to 80 mph that did a lot of damage.  We lost some roof tiles off our apartment building and two trees in the front yard were damaged, one so severely that it had to be cut down.  I took pictures of it before that happened.  Here is one of them.  Click on the picture for a bigger view.

We often parked near this tree.  Fortunately, it fell in the grass and not on our car.

The power went out for at least two and a half hours ( I went to bed so I don't know when it came back on).   Some folks in our area were without power for a week afterwards.  It was definitely scary to watch in the dark.  But our cat, Smoky, found it fascinating and kept getting up in the window to watch. 

We had the TV on when the power went out and it got fried.  All we saw on it when we turned it back on was a horizontal line.  Take my advice and don't turn on your TV during a storm to check for any emergency messages.  Keep a battery operated radio for that.  We haven't bought a new TV yet and it's been a bit strange without one (we're watching things on our computer).

Anyway, we consider ourselves fortunate.  Things could have been much worse.