Faithfully Following: Hurricane Humberto

Hello! We are alive and well after dealing with Tropical Storm-turned Hurricane Humberto. Sometime in the night, after turning off the Weather Channel, Humberto became a big boy and upgraded himself to a Hurricane. Almost all the way up to a Level 2 hurricane, actually. So, we were very glad we had tried to get everything tightened up the night before.

At around 3:30am, I woke up to hear the storm starting outside. Since I am known around this house as the Lightest Sleeper in the World, it was no suprise that I couldn't go back to sleep after that. (Hubby says I could hear a cricket toot a mile away. And of course, I moderated that to say "toot" there's no way Burly Man used that phrase.)

So, anyway, I watched out the window as the rain and the winds wreaked havoc on our yard and neighborhood. Apparently the eye of the storm came right over us. There was a lull in activity for about 16 minutes and then WHAM! The Eye Wall hit around 4:30-ish and that was

just crazy! Our yard was fine up until then, when suddenly, the much-aniticipated storage shed came crashing down! We didn't even hear it, but when we looked out the back window, it was lying flat where it had been standing minutes before.

Finally, around 6:30am, things quieted down to a steady rain with a breeze. We didn't lose power, but some people in our neighborhood did. Our next-door neighbor had about 7" of rain standing in the side yard. One of my friends called to say that they had lost power and the Energy company says it could be a few days. Ugh. (I tried really hard to be considerate and not mention that I was tripping about the cable being off! I can be so self-centered, God has His hand's full with me............Hey, I heard that!!)

I was really impressed with how the whole town started cleaning up shortly after they assessed the damage. Every single yard was busy with action. Chainsaws were buzzing, getting all the mangled trees out of the way; rakes were scraping all the errant leaves out of the grass; generators were humming at houses w/o power, and neighbors were helping each other carry trash to the street. It reminded me of when Hurricane Hugo came all the way up to Charlotte when I was younger. That's basically my only other experience with a hurricane. This area went through even more two years ago with Hurricane Rita, so they were all eager to get things back to normal as quickly as possible. It worked out a lot better than waiting on the government to send people to do it for you. But that's my personal opinion. (Since this is my blog, I can have it, right?)

Here's the storage building:

After