by Ethan Johnson
April 11, 2008

Since I am not native to these parts (Texas), I am reasonably cognizant that we live in a tornado prone area, and any given storm can produce the Big One. But after years of "just" thunderstorms and maybe some hail for good measure, I admit that I slipped into a sense of complacency. Guess what?

Wednesday night/Thursday morning, we had thunderstorms that seemed fairly garden variety. Our dogs have decided after all of these years that storms spook them, and they try to breach the dog gate to get to - well, I don't know where they want to go. They don't seem to have a clear escape route either. Just not in their designated room. We had a breach, and I had to get up and stick them in their crate for the night so we had a shot at sleeping.

A little while later, I heard thunder, saw lightning flash, heard more thunder, and then realized that the thunder wasn't stopping. It was a steady, low rumble off in the distance. I woke up, and Marlena was already awake-ish, and I said that the thunder didn't sound normal. She didn't think anything was out of the ordinary per se, when something hit our house. Okay, that's really not normal.

We went out and sat with the dogs. I have a "rabbit ears" antenna hooked up to our TV in cases of severe weather blotting out the satellite dish. The over-the-air local stations are running digital channels, which means designated weather stations augmenting the traditional single channel per station. I'm rather annoyed with the local channels, as they were good about covering the storm story at 4am, but insisting that we were having "high winds, sorta" while displaying a SWIRLING graphic over our neighborhood. Oh sure, and earthquakes are just some dust settling. Seriously, at one point a local station said to watch out for "strong winds" and then showed a graphic claiming that the highest recorded wind speed was 32 MPH. Riiiiight. Cars were reportedly being tossed onto roofs south of us. You know, like what always happens in 32 MPH wind gusts.

Without further ado, here are some photos of the aftermath around our neighborhood (and home). We came out relatively unscathed, I'm happy to say. But we need to be readier for the rougher stuff.

Proof that these weren't mere "straight line" West to East winds. These neighbors had a section of fence get thrown from the back of the house into the street out front. West-east winds would have sent it Easterly, not to the North (and over a house).

One of two areas of minor roof damage on our house. First roof damage since 1999. Amazing. I'll take the bother.

Our immediate neighbor to the East not only lost sections of fence, but her big backyard tree was sheared at the base.

Officially: We love our new fence.

The alley behind our house, looking East. I helped drag the fence out of the alley (nails up).

My neighbor's fence to the West of us. Amazingly, he patched it together right away rather than have it replaced. This was only possible because the panels came down, not the posts.

I took a tour of my walking route, and came upon this disaster fairly quickly. By the way, this is the street where that other panel should have landed during straight-line winds. These people told me that their air conditioner was blown off of its cement foundation. Sheesh.

Lots of this going on around town.

This isn't storm related, but a friendly reminder of why I'm glad we don't live on a corner lot.

Another fun repair job waiting to happen.

More effed-up fences.

House on the corner across from our street that took some fairly heavy roof damage.

Shingles all over the end of our street, mostly from that corner house.

City crew on the spot to start cleaning up the fallen tree branches.

I saw a bunch of neat stacks of shingles the closer I got to our house, and wondered who was making them.

Helpful neighbor (he's from Cleveland) cleaning up shingles. FYI, this is the first time he and I have ever met, and we have both lived here (same side of the street) since 1999.

So, ultimately this isn't all that horrible as natural disasters go, but for our sleepy neighborhood that's excitement enough. We'll get back to the bored teenagers egging cars in a few months. Can't wait! <EM>