Windstorm!
Last Sunday began as “the day I forgot to put the coffee pot under the coffee maker” and brewed a big aromatic mess all over my kitchen counter. Until Matt’s afternoon football game… Sunday then became “the day we encountered the remnants of Hurricane Ike” and gained a first-hand understanding of wind power.
By the time Matt’s team lost in overtime (a moment of sympathetic silence, please) the gusty winds had blustered into a steady surge that rocked vehicles and snapped trees. The kids and I dropped their dad off at his condo and began what would normally be a twenty-five minute drive home.
A street sign blew by. We drove by a completely caved-in garage door. Sapling-sized branches flew overhead and dropped beside us as we crept along in the slowed traffic. Trees bent down at unnatural angles, and the sky was littered with fragments of leaves. Riveting stuff.
When we finally reached the road that would be our straight-shot home it was emphatically blocked by a massive sycamore. We gamely turned left only to be flagged down by a weary motorist warning of more of 
the same up that road. By the time we finally rolled into our driveway an hour and a half later, we felt we’d conquered a vehicular version of the autumnal corn maze. Fallen trees, dead traffic lights, falling power lines… A firefighter at our last roadblock summed it up well as he listed all of the fallen tree reports for the area and advised me to make good time on the one route left open to us. Hopefully, we could cross it before a power line or tree blocked it off to us. My “worst case” imaginings involved remote parking and somehow hiking home (at least Matt would be protected by football pads)…
Of course, the house had no power. No complaints, though. Our neighborhood was restored just a little more than a day later. We lost some food and a good night’s sleep but gained a “boardgame by candlelight” night and a freshly cleaned refrigerator (when you have to take everything out anyway…).
I just got an e-mail from a friend, relegated to conducting business from an area sandwich shop until his home/office regains the rudimentary conveniences of electricity and water. Two of my sisters and one grandma are still without power, and I understand some outlying areas have been warned to expect nothing until the end of the week. I still have to contend with a thirty-five foot tree that split down the middle and landed in my neighbor’s yard. But no one was underneath when it fell and having now experienced sustained 70mph winds and our utter lack of power in the midst of a force so dynamically powerful, I think we came out just fine.
More Utah Adventures coming up (Next: Lower Calf Creek Falls in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Memorial)
WOW…..
Hugely descriptive, Heather.
Loving your coffee mishap and what an adventure r your ride home. Glad you were safe.
I’ve always believed you should have a cup of coffee before you’re allowed to make coffee. I’m sure you know what I mean now…. Sorry about the mess! Inside the kitchen and out. I’m certainly relieved that you and the kids are safe and got to spend some good quality time together. And that the power is back. Yeah for those minor conveniences which we sometimes take for granted.!
Great Post and pictures.
It must have been great to get home.
I lived through a massive hurricane in the Fiji Islands many years ago and lived to tell the tale but many didn’t. Wind might be invisible but what devastating power it has.
Moneyblog: That sums up my own reaction pretty well…
Jean-Luc: I really wanted to get more pictures, but that wasn’t practical when I had the kids with me. I snapped a couple through my window as we waited to turn around (again and again!), but the high winds made it pretty challenging to steady the camera.
Jackal: Glad you can relate to the coffee “disaster!” Why confine that lovely aroma to a coffee pot, huh?
Intrepid: Consider me the illustration for your very valid point! I can go without my morning coffee, but I prefer to start my day with it (in a cup).
I’m still finishing laundry for a sister which makes me extra grateful that we can again wash clothes when we need them and that we don’t have to pull our food our of coolers. -And the lights are kind of nice to have at night…
Suzanne: Big relief (especially with kids in the car). You should write about your Fiji experience (if you haven’t already). Hopefully, most of us will never experience a hurricane, but you’re gifted at sharing details that can help others understand.
I’ve done the coffee without pot trick before! Love the photo of the boy in the tree! Glad you made it through the storm. That had to be a scary drive!
Thankfully we rode the storm out in our basement!
A guy I work with went into the office late Sunday to take care of some things. His subdivision is new (that is, no large trees) and he didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary during his five-mile drive to work.
He had electricity at his place (in fact, he never lost it). He noticed the wind but didn’t think too much of it.
When he got to work the power was out which left him with an “I wonder what’s going on feeling.” It wasn’t until much later that he knew we were having power outages.
Having power or not having power seemed to be luck as much as anything else.
I’m sorry for the folks who can’t expect to have it back on until the weekend. I guess we’re lucky it didn’t happen in mid-December.
Bad Momma: The storm toppled yet another tree onto my neighbors’ playset, so our big tree has become their temporary playground.
Glad you all made it through safely. That wind couldn’t have been too good to your garden…?
Delmer: Must be nice to “not notice” a power outtage! That’s a man unfettered by cellphones and the internet…
A family we know in the next neighborhood from us was “missed” when their street was plugged back in to electric power. I hear they now have to wait until after AEP makes a second pass at missed neighborhoods before they can be dealt with individually.
Heather glad to hear everyone is fine…having experienced a couple of storms I know how destructive the wind can be and of course how inconveniencing the aftermath can be…
Hi, Heather! I was wondering how you did with Ike. And that was only the tail-winds of Ike! Imagine feeling the full force as they did in Texas and Louisiana! We tend to forget just how powerful Nature is, living comfortably in our homes and cars…Until we get “unplugged”, suddenly go dark, lose our internet and find a tree on top of our house… And, yes, it would have been very different in the middle of winter… I am reminded of the nasty ice-storms in Quebec, Canada a while back when people were without electricity for over 10 days in the middle of winter… Yikes!
JollyJo,
I talked to a friend at the gym who was in San Antonio while Ike’s aftermath blew through our area. He encountered displaced Galveston and Houston folks with no home to return to. Kind of puts it our blessings in proper perspective…
Nina,
Ten days in a Quebec winter?! We’re lightweights here!
There’s a lot of talk about the need for more buried lines, though. No one wants to do this again!