Ca-Razy Storm!

We had a very quick developing and very violent storm come through at 5 AM.  We knew there were going to be some thunderstorms, but expected nothing like this!  It must have formed directly over Bellevue because we got the worst damage. 

I woke up to hail hitting the house, heavy rain and hearing the wind whip around outside.  When I looked out the window I couldn't even see across the street very well because of the heavy wind and rain.  It was like a hurricane out there!  The small trees out front were bent over to the ground, the basketball hoops were all knocked over and I tried to turn the TV on to see if there were any warnings.  Our weather radio wasn't even going off.  The dish had no signal and the power went off right around then too.  Collin woke up screaming because his night light went off and the fan in his room wasn't going so it was quiet and dark and he was scared.  Collin's screaming woke up Brady and he was a little scared at the darkness but I was already up out of bed and so I went and got the boys. 

We decided to go to the basement just in case, and besides, we had to babysit the sump pump since the power was out and it was raining so hard.  We still have the tent up so the boys went in there and we had our flashlights and camping lanterns out.  We tried to tune the radio to find out the weather but the stations were still playing music.  About 10 minutes after we were in the basement, the weather radio finally started beeping and saying there was a warning.  But it was only a severe thunderstorm warning, rather than a tornado warning like I expected it to be.  And it had moved so fast that the warning wasn't even for our county, it was one to the west in Iowa across the river from us.  The wind had died down a bit here but it was still raining hard.  We heard on the radio that the winds here were gusting at 78 mph!  A category 1 hurricane is 74 mph!!

The sump pump was filling up and we had to fill and dump buckets outside for a little while to get the water out.  We stayed downstairs for a while longer and had set up our blankets and pillows in the tents and tried to get the kids to go back to sleep while listening to an easy listening radio station.  Wasn't happening after about an hour of being down there.  So I took Collin upstairs with me and put him in my bed since it was starting to get light outside because it was now after 6 AM.  He wasn't so scared anymore and went back to sleep.  So did Brady in the basement with Aaron.  The sump pump alarm went off again and Aaron emptied it out again.  At about 8 AM when we woke back up, we looked outside to see what it looked like.  The sky was party sunny and it was a complete mess on the ground!

Most everyone in our neighborhood had minimal roof damage with a couple missing shingles, but not much because it's a new neighborhood and there are no big trees.  Not true for us and our neighbors because we have the big trees behind the house.

Here's our big beautiful tree.

The big thick branch fell from the top and took 2 or 3 other branches out with it on the way down, landing on the chain link fence.

Here's Brady and his friend for a little perspective of how big the branches and the tree used to be.

 Later our neighbors, who had a branch fall in their yard, came over to help clean up ours.  It was him and his 2 teenage sons working with chainsaws to cut up all the branches and get them off the fence.  It only took them about 4 hours of labor with all 4 of them working on it.  Love the Midwestern neighborly attitude!!

The damage to the fence and how much they had to clear on the other side of the fence.

We are just renting here and the rental agency was grateful that we cleared the tree ourselves, and I guess the home owners are going to pay to get the fence fixed.  Luckily, it was just a few sections that need replaced.  Thank goodness that the whole tree didn't fall over toward the house!  Definitely an eventful night/early morning!