The 4th of July is normally my all-time favorite holiday, but this
year’s celebration was slightly tainted.
It all started on Sunday, July 1st. Hubs and I were headed over to the local water hole
(i.e. the park
district’s outdoor water park facility) to meet up with his brother’s
family. As we drove over, I noticed the sky to the west was looking dark, with black, heavy
clouds bearing down on us. I sent a quick text to my sister-in-law to see
if they were still planning on
coming, but when we pulled into the parking lot we saw they had
beaten us there.
My sister-in-law was already at
the front desk checking to
see if the pool was going to remain open or not. It wasn’t. Waiting in the parking lot, we could
see the guards scooting guests out of the gates. As one particularly frantic family hurried past us to
their SUV, we could hear the mom explaining to her kids that a big storm
was headed our way.
On that ominous
note, Hubs and I headed
back out of the lot. Since
we weren’t going swimming, we decided to drive over to Walgreens to look for a Redbox
movie. Hubs had agreed
to attend a party later
in the afternoon at one of his co-worker’s houses, but with the change of plans-- decided to leave right away. The party was, as he explained it: “Just a bunch of guys throwing
bags. You wouldn’t like it.” That being said, I was going to sit at home with the dogs and
watch a chick flick. Unfortunately (and later I would think fortunately),
there were no good movies available.
As we turned to walk out of the store, the lights started
flickering. That is when we realized that it had started raining.
And it was raining hard. It was a downpour mixed with hurricane force winds. Through the sliding glass doors, we
could see the trees in the parking lot being blown to 90 degree angles, coupon papers
were whipping across the blacktop, and the street lights were rocking back and forth-
suspended from their wires over the intersection.
So we did what any normal, crazy people would
do—we ran for our car. In the 30 seconds
that we were probably outside, we got completely soaked. It felt like we had gone swimming after all. The 2 minute drive home was just as intense
with limited visibility, but we made it.
After another crazy rain-dash into the house, we both breathed a sigh of
relief.
The thunder and lightning started shortly after
we made it inside. And the day, which
had started out in the mid 90s, had plummeted quickly into the 70s. I hastened to shut off the air conditioners
and remove my wet clothes. I was
freezing and ended up wearing my favorite old pair of sweatpants and a Wheaton
College sweatshirt that I found in the hidden recesses of our walk in closet.
When Hubs came upstairs to change out of
his wet clothes, I took a moment to peak out our master bedroom windows. I was just in time to see our neighbors big
trash can blow down the street. The rain
was hitting the windows in sheets and the wind was the fiercest I’ve ever seen. I turned to Hubs and asked him if he thought
this was a tornado—Should we be in the basement? He said we were fine… and then the power went
out. And then the quarter-sized hail
started. And then a hefty branch on our
tree out front proceeded to twist off. And
then 3 trees fell in our backyard.
It was a mighty storm. I believe the weatherman later reported that
our town had 85-90 mile per hour winds. It
wasn’t hard to believe because stepping outside our house was like entering
into a war zone. There were branches,
limbs, and debris everywhere. In fact,
we couldn’t even see the grass in our backyard- not with the 3 fallen trees and
all of the branches. We later discovered
there were 2 power lines down on our street alone, with hundreds more down across
the area. We were lucky in that our house and car escaped
damage. Many weren’t so lucky.
It took us 2 days to pick up our
backyard. We had to use a chain saw to
cut up all the timber. I actually found
sticks that had been shot into the ground like arrows, buried 3-4 inches into
the soil. Thankfully, although the
garden took a beating, most of the plants survived the onslaught.
The hardest part for us, was that we lost
our electricity for 3.5 days. We finally
got it back at 3:30pm on the 4th of July. And of course it was in the high 90s each day
we were without it. Unfortunately, we
ended up losing a lot of the food we had in our fridge, but we were able to save
everything in our deep freezer with the help of ice bags.
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