That's What I Call a Storm

So leading up to this afternoon, all the meteorologists were warning of potential severe weather. I am of the opinion that for it to be 'severe weather;, I have to be too scared to go near a window. That's never happened here, yet. Shoot... I played in the tropical storm winds that came through Auburn, remnants of a hurricane that blew up through the gulf when I was in college. So it takes a lot for me to believe 'severe' weather is coming. I know it exists... but I also firmly believe that the meteorologist over dramatize stuff.

But today was interesting. Downtown wasn't too 'severe', so to speak. Nut it's not one I would've wanted to be stuck out in, a any way. At least for about 15 minutes of it. There were actually two bands that came through. The first was just a lot of rain. Then the sun came out. Then the next band came through, ad this one they were saying 'could get bad' with severe wind gusts and heavy rain. Well... that part was true. There was a couple of minuted where it was white out conditions because the rain was coming down so hard AND the wind was gusting (they said areas were getting up to 7-mph gusts). I know this because I was glues to the front window watching it. Then there was a blue flash, and pop, another bright flash, and a crash. There was so much going on, I wasn't sure what it was at first, and the wind was so loud, you weren't quite sure where the noise was even coming from.

Then I saw it. The tall tree that Eric and I have been saying needed to come down had, indeed, came down. And I have no idea how, for as big of a tree this was (at least 30'), it hit nothing. No cars, no buildings (directly, anyway)... it fell right down into the tree lawn. It took some shingles off of the condo building next to us and damage the gutters a bit, and bent up a outside stair railing... but that was it. As soon as the big gusts were done, all the neighbors were out looking at it in amazement. Wow. That's all we could say.  Wasn't just a limb, but it cracked near the base of the trunk and just fell.

One the storm fully subsided, Eric and I decided to drive around to see anything else that might have damage, specifically any building his CDC owns. He was lucky... none of Riley's properties were damaged. Not even an awning out of place, which were ripped off of a lot of other buildings. But then we heard of some buildings that were damaged. The first was one his CDC was looking at helping to restore... the brand new roof was ripped off of it. It blew up and off, all over the street it fronts. While there, we heard of another historic building down the street that completely collapsed in the storm. So we drove down a bit more and sure enough, completely crumbled. We went by another building that we knew of that was being renovated... it's roof had collapsed in on itself. And yet another down the road, where they were trying to save the historic facade... well, it fell over like a domino. These were brick building, mind you... not little wood sheds. That's how crazy the wind gusts were.

That was just the damage in the downtown area, and I'm sure we only saw a fraction. There were reports of tornadoes coming in from other parts of the state. A Starbucks just to the northwest had a car blown into it. Roofs were lifted off of buildings up in Kokomo. And who knows what other damage will become apparent tomorrow, when people head back to their places of business.

That was a hell of storm. I might even say the meteorologist were in the right to warn us so adamantly about these storms coming through. This time.