May 13

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On the 12th it was stormy.  Rainy and windy.  The tornado sirens went off multiple times.  Burt and I spent some time in the (unfinished) basement.



On the 13th the radar showed we'd get some more stormy weather, so I got out and walked Burt, and walked me, before things got nasty.

Lilac.

Lots of tulips still going strong.  (With grape hyacinth underneath.)

Remember those fuzzy leaves we looked at?  Here's how they had grown, on the 13th.  I still think these are locust trees.

Redbud.

Big fish in a small (6'x8'?) pond.  I don't think this is over 18" deep, if that.  The fish go inside for the winter.  Not the frogs, though.  This neighbor likes to have bullfrogs.  If the frogs don't survive the winter, he gets more.  At the Chinese grocery.....

We think we have seen one frog in this pond this year.  We don't know if it's one of last year's frogs, or if it's a new one.

(Nearly) spent tulips.

Hmmm.  Good thing I'm nearly home.

Looking west over a cute little house.

It was windy on the 13th.  It was rainy.  No worse than the 12th.

No sirens went off.  The power, however, did go off.  So I couldn't watch tv to see what they were saying (and I couldn't see the radar).  I did not take Burt and go to the basement.

After the raining and blowing stopped, I became aware that there was more traffic than usual on our street, but I was reading, and didn't pay much attention.

Then I became aware of the helicopter.  Flying round and round.  And round and round and round and round.  Definitely not normal!

I decided to go see what was up.  I was sure some street was blocked, sending traffic up our street, but I had no idea.................................

This tree is on my block.  The neighbor in this house was out walking, before the storm, and we chatted about how we had hustled out so we could walk before things got iffy.  This big tree went right between her house and her neighbors'..............  It seems that her house sustained very little damage -- a bit to the roof. I think the neighbors were unscathed.

Zooming in on the image above -- that's the roots of the tree, just above the curb.....

Turning 90 degrees left from the above.  Looking west.  Two more big trees down.

This tree is on my street, a couple of houses south of the street we were just looking at.  The house was, again, essentially unscathed, but a smaller tree was heavily damaged.

Of course, if you were going out to look at fallen trees and tipped up sidewalks, you would bring Clifford, the Big Red Dog............  (Under Dad's arm......)

This lilac was untouched.

One thing good about only our little neighborhood being affected was that all of the recovery resources were concentrated on us, and people were on the scene to help very quickly.  (Including the power company -- the electricity was only out for about four hours.)

You know something is peculiar if you see a city bus on our little residential street.

There was way, WAY more traffic that afternoon than I had ever seen.  Not one of the vehicles you see here was parked.  All of them were trying to go somewhere.....

Yikes!

Lots of neighbors were out, looking.  Many of us were home all afternoon; none of us whose trees stayed up were aware of how bad it had been until we ventured out.  We all agreed we'd experienced it as "No worse than Monday (the 12th)," when no damage was done in our neighborhood.

I wonder if there were just one or two gusts that were able to wreak havoc?

There were trees down all over a few-block area.  Miller was blocked, Dexter was blocked, 7th was blocked (hence the volume of traffic -- including city buses!) on our street.

It had been raining and raining over many days.  The ground was saturated from Monday's storms.  All the trees I saw fell from south to north.

One tree in the middle of the block across the street from us took out two garages.  One of the garages was squished and twisted.  It looked like Dorothy's house, after it landed in Oz.  You felt you should look for stripey socks and ruby slippers, coming out from under the edge of the building...........

I only heard of one house that was seriously damaged (a tree right in the middle of it), and I heard no one was hurt.  Thank goodness for that.

Yikes.

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