Derecho

Friday, June 29th a "thunderstorm" that nobody paid much attention to moved across Baltimore around 11:20pm.  It ended up being a derecho and made for some exciting days ahead.   I had actually just checked the weather radar before heading up stairs to go to bed.  I remember thinking it was a monster of a storm cell, but wasn't too alarmed since Maryland gets lots of great summer storms.  

The wind picked up, thunder rolled, and lighting struck.  I was feeding Adeline before going to sleep and Eric, who was already in bed got up to look out the window.  He even made me get up to look out the window to see how impressive the storm was.  There were a few hits of lightening that we were sure hit ground.  I even texted my mom, who was in the basement, "Quite a storm!"  Audrey woke up at one point, shaking like a leaf.  I was in the middle of trying to tell her not to be scared, when I realized well this is kind of scary.  

 A few moments later, the power surged and then went off.  We all headed downstairs to do the routine- get candles and flashlights and tape the fridge shut and check on my mom.  We stayed up and watched the storm for a bit.  We saw that a huge branch (the size of a tree) fell near our garage.  Once it calmed down, Eric went to check it out to see if the roof was still intact which thankfully it was!  It was a quick storm, done by 12:30am.  A few neighbors went out in the rain, Eric joined them and saw that a big branch fell on one of our friends' car.  Our whole side of the street was without power.  We knew that we would see more of the storms effects in the morning.

It was a warm night without AC.  Being without power during a heat wave is no fun.  

We woke at 6am to start our day, which would seem like the longest day ever...

By 7am Eric went out to get ice, by 8am there was a  line of 150 people at the local grocery store to buy ice.  After getting ice, he went back out to check Home Depot for a generator and picked up 

one of the last ones on the shelf.  Later we counted our blessings for getting an early start and for the blessing of ice and a generator.  We knew after Hurricane Irene and loosing power for five days that this could take awhile.

While Eric was out, he got to see the worse of the storms effects in our neighborhood.

Later, we learned that the lady that lived there was asleep when this tree came through her bedroom.  She had to crawl out from under a branch and out the bedroom door which only cracked open.  She walked away that night with only a scratch on her face, but she will have to leave her home for 8 months to a year.

We had some great friends/neighbors come to help us set up the generator and cut down the tree branch.

After not taking a nap because it was too hot and climbing out of his pack and play in the cool basement twice , Elliott joined Audrey to watch their Daddy hard at work.  He sweated through four t-shirts that day.  It was 100 degrees with a heat index around 107.

The tree branch was actually hollow, which probably contributed to the reason it fell. 

Our new generator

Some of the other neighborhood damage

We got the generator running that afternoon, so got to hook up our deep freezer, refrigerator, and fans.

We also charged up many a neighbor's cell phones.  That night we ran the window unit AC in our room and Elliott's room and had Audrey sleep in his room.

Church was cancelled on Sunday morning since, with so many outages in the area, they couldn't run the AC in 103 degree heat.  We drove around for about 45 minutes looking for a place to eat lunch as Gogo wanted to treat us to lunch.  We finally found a Chipotle with power.  It was nice to eat in a cool place and we actually were a little cold- I guess we acclimated to being super hot all the time.

Here are some pictures from  areas close by our house:

We were without power for four long hot days.  I was so thankful that my mom was here to help juggle the three kids (one of which was only seven weeks old), cooking on the grill, and navigating a house full of extension cords.  Elliott was especially interested in the maze of extension cords, power strips, adapters, and random electronics we were charging for our neighbors (which I guess I was too busy to even take a picture of).   I went to work at a friend's house during rest time while my mom stayed with the kids.  The neighborhood slowly emptied out and by Monday and Tuesday it felt like a ghost town.

Here is E Ry walking his froggy in his froggy boots while my mom helped clean up the yard.

Thanks mom for all your hard work in the midst of the heat!

The power came back on at 8:45pm Tuesday July 3rd.  Cheers were heard from around the entire neighborhood.  It was an extra blessing because it was a few hours before my sister Rahime and her precious daughter Eleanor came for a week to visit for Audrey's birthday.  She was braving coming anyways not knowing if we would have power or not, especially since she is from the always cool San Francisco Bay Area.