Storm Damage

Last night, in a twist of the unexpected, we had some really bad storms - again. This time, we had damage. We are all in perfect condition, and thankfully we have our lives. In the grand scheme of things, we lost nothing except a few things here and there.

We had been keeping track of the weather most all day, and toward 6pm, we had shut off the radio and we were flipping channels on the tv, not really concerned with what was going on north and south of us (of which, we had been told all day that was where the thunderstorm action was going to be, primarily.). Next thing I know, Joe says "OH MY GOD, Kate - there's rotation on top of our town right this moment."

"What??" I said. "I don't hear anything."

Right then, the wind kicked up hard and our satellite went out. We opened the back door, and it was straight line winds across our backyard. No wind blowing inside because it was blowing south to north, sideways. We didn't hear any sirens going off, but we still grabbed a bunch of couch cushions and headed straight for the laundry room. Once we were safe inside, we practically stopped breathing so we could listen. We could hear something ripping off our roof, and every now and then something bang up against the side of our house.

A few minutes later, we emerged from the laundry room to check out the storm. The winds were not straight lined any longer, but still blowing very hard in every which way. Rain pouring out of the night sky in buckets. JD, Joe's cousin who lives behind us, reported in to us that he had shingles all over his yard from neighboring houses, and the winds had taken down a portion of his fencing. This was the rain and wind situation was the condition for the next two and a half hours. Our street was a river, and our backyard was a pond.

About an hour after we had paid a visit to the laundry room, the doorbell rang frantically. Startled, we ran to the door to find our next door neighbor with a flashlight and raingear telling us that all the shingles in the YARDS were from our house, and that we were missing about 1/3 of our shingle coverage. I ran outside in the rain and flood to see. Sure enough......

I went back inside and began inspecting the house. Within moments, I had found leaks in several rooms in the house.

The attic had 2 major leaks. I crawled up through the insulation and boards and stablized some buckets. Next, our guest bedroom had 3 major leaks, and Joey's room had 2 major leaks. Joe and I moved some furniture and placed buckets out to catch the water. I went to the other attic entrance and found another leak. Our upstairs bathroom had a leak coming through the vent. After we had found all the leaks we could, and made mental notes of the other water damages that hadn't sprouted leaks yet, we calmed down, cooked dinner and TRIED to put Joey down in our room, as we didn't want leaks to sprout over his head in the middle of the night in his room.

Finally the rain stopped. The leaking continued for probably another 30 minutes, then subsided. We inspected the house one more time and found major water damage in our living room.

Our satellite system was still down - most likely damaged in the storm - so we weren't able to see if there were any other storm systems coming. We had a weather radio, but we weren't really relying too heavily on that since it didn't even warn us of the storm that had hit earlier. ((It warned, but not for our town. It just stated that our county was going to get a little hit, but nothing to be alarmed about.))

This morning when we awoke, we were able to see all the roof damages. About 1/3 of our shingles are missing on the south side of our house - we are going to need major repairs (thank God we are renting). One of our vehicles took a hit from flying debris.... most likely a couple of shingles.

And now.......its snowing.