Typical summer storm started with some angry sounding clouds, that grumbled on for about an hour, until they twisted into a blacked sky, with more lighting flashes than the forth of July. Then came the rain. Like a fire hydrant in the sky had been opened on top of our house. The storm quickly grew so intense, that we did the, "Check every weather forecast in the planet, this HAS to be a tornado," shuffle.
The radars showed a huge red splotch just over our county, no where else. The red blob twisted, and grew, and shrunk, then spun, and grew again. Rain, Flash, Straight Line Winds, Flash, Hail, Flash Flash, Rain, Hail, Thunder, Flash.
Two hours later, and the storm slowly began to burn itself out. Two hours of intense lighting, rain, and hail. Without a break. That was the crazy part. Storms here are always on the move, they come, and they go. You get slammed, and then you get a break. This one formed over us, and stayed.
Luckily the house seems to be fine, with no major damage that I can find. Everyone made it safely through the storms, including the goat. ;) My garden on the other hand... not a total loss, but there's quite a bit I'm positive we won't be able to save.
This is mainly how our entire property looks right now. Lots of small trees down, and large limbs. Luckily there were no larger trees taken down... but it's still a huge mess that will take forever to clean up.
During the storm our entire driveway was under water... this is the morning after the storm.
My Black Russian Sunflowers. I might try to trellis the few that kept their roots in the ground. Some tomato plants right next to these also were bent over, stakes and all. Gotta love the wind shears. ;(
My poor pop corn. It was just starting to grow ears too. Again, if possible, I'll try to trellis it all up, and see what I can save, but there's a lot of roots showing under that mess...
Loofa Squash, yanked off the trellis, and torn to bits by the hail. Everything is looking pretty much like this, smooshed to the ground, with lots of holes. It's going to be a waiting game to see what stays green, and what starts to turn brown. The silver lining is that it all turns to compost eventually, lol. Failures today, make awesome dirt tomorrow. ;) As long as all of my brand new Spruces, and my Pretty Baby Pink Dogwood stay alive, I'll be happy.
This by far entertains me to no end. The one fallen limb, is holding the other fallen limb in the air. Like someone jammed it in there after the fact. And actually this side of the property had the most damage all together. Another wind shear I'd imagine.
So for the next few weeks it's going to be a lot of picking up sticks, and bonfires for us. You're welcome to stop by, just bring the chainsaw and some marshmallows!
~Emily
