Its been a wild day. Monday morning about 4am the sirens in town started blaring. Our weather radio lit up like a Christmas tree with a Tornado warning. I had been monitoring the radar because there were two storms that looked to merge right over us... and merge they did! I have never seen anything like it. We've had Derecho's before, but this one was wild! It lasted a half hour with sustained winds of 80-90 mph. We had 105 mph gusts. The lightning was so extreme, it hurt our eyes. There was no time for thunder it was so frequent. The rain was torrential.
Normally in times like this I grab my camera and head out to film it. Not this time. This time was actually scary. As we were watching radar, and the weatherman explaining how "rotation was re-generating" just to our west, the power went out. We started to hear tree's breaking and metal bending and we ran to the basement. We sat on the cold cement floor for the next 30 minutes wondering when it would end and if we'd keep the house.
As the sun rose the winds died down and the damages became visible. Large tree's littered the yard, metal from the neighbors barn wrapped around our tree's, the corn fields were FLAT! The corn had grown significantly over the last week reaching almost 5.5 feet. It was the most promising corn crop in years. Now it's ruined. This storm was massive. It carved a path of destruction miles wide and traveled all the way to Detroit (550 miles).
We were lucky. Very lucky. A house 3 miles to our north is a complete loss. The whole roof and part of the wall is gone. The pig farm next door to them is gone (pigs seem fine). Power lines along the main highway to town are all down and wires are wrapped around trees and farmhouses. In town the force of the wind literally moved the huge metal street lights. The whole pole was swung into the opposite direction. It was bizarre. The one gas station in town that had a generator had cars lined up for miles to get fuel. We decided to drive 30 minutes to find fuel at another station that had a generator rather than wait. We also raided the last of the ice there to keep our frozen food good. I had just purchased about 80 bucks worth of storage (meat and cheeses) that were on sale 2 days prior. Just my luck we lose power after that!
I never went to bed Sunday into Monday. Instead I played pick-up-sticks all day (or rather drag tree's with the tractor)! The worst part was finding all the birds nests and dead baby birds that had been blown to their death. I hated that. The farmers waste no time cleaning up all pitching in to help each other since they all have tractors that can pull and haul. In town it was a different story. People were more interested in raiding the stores and getting hotel rooms since it looks like power will be out for almost a week. I don't blame them. It is extremely hot and humid and not a fun time to be without air conditioning. The same thought crossed our mind but we would have had to drive at least an hour to find a room. The Red Cross has moved in and set up "cooling stations" in town. We got our power back late last night which was an absolute miracle. We are on a different grid than those just to our north where the worst hit. The greenhouses are damaged with part of the roofs missing and some exhaust fans that blew in. They lucked out big time!
I will post pictures tomorrow night if I can get out onto the roads. There were power poles and wires everywhere today and we limited where we drove. Power and tree crews have been called in from out of state and they are working through the night so the roads should be open by morning. We are very grateful that we were spared on this one.
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