And Then It Rained...

Yes, because we didn't have enough adventure in our lives, Mother Nature decided to add some more spice to our life.   Today started out as a typical Monday, we knew we had the dry wall subs coming to start in the studio and the electrician was on his way to finish up connecting the studio to the main power in the house.  

I had decided to take a quick shower before anyone showed up and the wind had picked up considerably, so, I was super quick about getting in and out of the shower.   I am deathly afraid of being in the shower during any storms as our house was hit years ago during a storm and the lightning traveled down the plumbing system of the house.   Not exactly the place I want to be during a storm!

Joel had just walked into the bathroom when a tremendous "BOOM" shattered the quiet of our house.  I screamed and jumped out of the shower so fast it startled Joel.   We both looked at each other, trying to figure out exactly what had happened.   As I was drying off, he shouted that I needed to get dressed as he smelled something hot in our living room.   Ummm, yeah, I got dressed pronto.   We both ran around the house, checking for signs of smoke and damage. 

At first, we thought a huge tree limb had broken off of one of the trees over our master bedroom.   But then we talked it through and realized we had been hit by lightning.  He yanked down the stairs leading to our attic and checked it out first, making sure nothing was on fire or smoldering up there.   After half an hour, we discovered our phones were down, our fax machine was fried, and our satellite box and Blue Ray player were also toast. 

Hey, if that's all, we felt pretty fortunate.   I just kept whispering, "Thank you, Lord.   Thank you for protecting us.  Thank you, Lord."   It took us the better part of the morning to shrug off our initial shock and shakiness.   Our electrician arrived just after all of this happened and he helped Joel check out everything to make certain we were safe and nothing was going to start a fire. 

Just after the lightning hit, the heavens opened up.   Joel was watching out the window and said it was hailing.   By the time I looked for myself, this is what I saw.

 The noise was deafening in our house as the hail continued to pelt our buildings.   And the wind was crazy ferocious.

Doesn't the pavilion look like it has snow on the roof?    See all the hail on the pavement and how far inside the pavilion it blew?

When I looked out front our lane looked like it had snow on it, the pieces of hail were so large.

When the storm calmed down a bit, I dashed outside and grabbed this hailstone.   After laying it on the floor, I fished around in my purse for some change and placed the quarter next to it so you could see how large the hail was that pounded us.   When the rain, lightning and hail finally stopped, we went outside to survey any damage that may have occurred.   There was most definitely no huge tree limb on our roof, confirming that we had to have been hit by lightning.

The only other damage we could find was one of the windows on my new studio broke from getting pelted with the hailstones.    I've already put a call in to our builders to order a new window as they can't repair the upper portion that is broken without replacing the whole window.   Oh, well, if that's the worst of it, we feel we got off easy.    It'll be a couple of days until our house phones are repaired and the DISH guys said they will be here tomorrow to work on that end of things.

So, yes, it rained on us this Monday.   The sun came out just after noon and the wind is still pretty brisk.   The weather channel says we are to get more severe storms this afternoon.   And now I can see the dark clouds moving in once again.    I can handle more rain, but this time I hope the severe stuff goes somewhere else.

Moving right along,
Debbie