I feel like bad luck!

The day before my class reunion as I was preparing the food for the party the weather started to get a bit dreary, so my Dad turned on the television. The weather report was that there was a hail storm heading our way. I was cursing to myself because my van was just out of storage for one week and now it would be pummeled with hail the size of golf balls. While this was all going on I was also on the phone to my friend Cyndi. I ended up having to get off the phone with her because the winds picked up and the water on the lake had so many waves it looked like a really rough bit of ocean. We started to hear noises on the rough and I took the kids to the hallway thinking a tree might fall on the house and that would be a safe place. The wind didn't stop and there were more loud noises and I finally realized the bathroom would be the safest place for all of us. The kids and I climbed in the bathroom and in true fashion my Dad paced around the house checking out what was going on outside. In my 25 years of growing up in the Midwest through hundreds of thunderstorms, tornado watches and warnings, I have never seen a storm quite as bad as this. I was thinking to myself as I sat in the bath with my kids, 'We just made it though an earthquake and now this?'. Honestly I couldn't believe that I could go through two stressful situations like this in a matter of 45 days.

After about 10 minutes the wind started to slow down and the loud noises from the roof stopped. I had the kids wait while I went to assess what had happened and I couldn't believe my eyes. Here are some pictures of the damage.



One of the 5 fallen trees and one side of my parents back patio.



The other side of the back patio.



A view of my parents house from the beach. (This is about an hour after the storm. Notice how it appears to be sunny and great weather.)



The roots of the tree.



My parents side yard. The leaves just stuck to the fence.



We had part of a tree fall of the roof. I think this is the one that made me run to the bathtub.



My Dad's truck underneath some pretty big branches. There is also a power line that fell 4 feet from his truck. Remarkably there was no damage to his truck.



A tree across the drive from my parents house.

Many people thought the storm was a tornado, but it was actually called a Straight Line Wind Storm and if you could see the damage it went in a complete straight line through this area.

The worst thing that happened though was that there were thousands of corn and bean crops that were completely shredded. The beans were replanted, but it is too late in the season for the corn. It will result in big losses for farmers and food prices growing again.

We ended up being without power for 5 days, but luckily thanks to my electrician brother-in-law Jared we had a generator that provided power to a few outlets in the house. My class reunion had to be moved to a different location (post to follow!).

We took a drive around the neighborhood and here are a few pictures from our damage tour.

One of the fallen trees. There were hundreds of trees just like this in the neighborhood.



There were a couple houses with massive trees on top of them.



This garage was complete destroyed by a tree.