Time And Tide

Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or to lose. Lyndon B.Johnson

Tuesday, September 21, 2004

a quick catch up

Ivan brought a lot of rain, gobs of wind that sucked several window panes right out of the cracked and chipping glazing meant to hold them in, and we lost 6 - 10 big oaks around the barn (some on the barn). It is such a tangled mess of trees out therre it is hard to tell just how many are down. There's going to be a major bunch of clearing out going on here in the near future.
We were without power from early Thursday evening until Sunday morning and the last several days have been spent catching up. It's amazing the house could get in such a mess when we couldn't really even do anything.
The chicks fared well and my patching job on the roof worked better than I had even hoped. It still leaked some, but not the big gushing leak from before my patch up job, so we're happy about that. The roof didn't blow off completely and we figure we're pretty lucky in that respect.
The storms brought us a highlight that none of us will soon forget. We were standing in the kitchen trying to can the rest of the muscadine jelly Doug had ready. I looked out the window and saw this tube of big black clouds behind the trees that line the field.
"Oh," I said to Doug as I pointed out the window, "Is that it?"
We just stood there for a minute watching the tunnel.
"It looks like smoke," Doug said, "Maybe something's on fire?"
I went to the back door to get a better look and he went to the front. We got out there just in time to watch the funnel cloud cut around the trees and head across the field beside the house. I lost sight of it around the corner of the house and I ran to the front door to join Doug on the porch. It wasn't big and it seemed that the wind was barely blowing, considering the face we were standing there watching a tornado, small though it was. Leaves and other debris spun around the outside edge of the funnel and we just stood there, transfixed by the sight.
Then it leaned sideways like a tree about to fall. The top stretched out toward the center of our drive and that's when we noticed the huge swirling mass of clouds hovering low in the sky, swirling wildly, kind of like when water swirls around the sink drain.
It reminded me of the movie Independence Day when the ships hovered above the city. It was so big and it looked like every cloud in the sky was being drawn to the center of the great big spinning circle. The small funnel we had been watching was sucked up and it continued to spin for a few minutes then it moved forward and was gone in an instant.
I have never in my life seen anything so COOL. And way scary (after the fact).
It was a busy weekend full of attempts to keep things organized enough to walk around once it got dark, candles positioned, and flashlights turned off so the batteries wouldn't go dead. And since Sunday it's a mad dash to catch up with laundry and cleaning. We're not sure about the barn...I have to talk to the insurance agent and see if anything can be done to help or if insurance will help with getting the windows put back in (none broke, thankfully).
And now I'm off to get started again...

1 Comments:

Blogger Brent said...

I stood outside ALL SUMMER during storms waiting to see a tornado!!! And I didn't see ANYTHING. It's a sight to behold, nature's fury in full force. I'm sorry you had all the damage, though. I hope you get things cleaned up quick!

8:32 PM  

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