Well, it's over...
A record-breaking thing, the sort you don't want to break. As many of you know by now,
there were a couple dozen tornados spawned out of this front, some coming in the dead of night.
More than a few folks have died from the storm at this point; a lot more are homeless from it.
I'm having a hard time finding any humor in it, honestly.
Yes, it happens "all the time" and usually, it's somewhere else - but no, it doesn't get any less awful
when it does. I did a lot of praying for folks today...
I haven't slept since night before last, a result of my being one of those "human barometers" that
extreme low air pressure events causes me metric craptons of additional pain - so I heard and saw every
wave of the storm and all it brought to bear, which was formidable.
We set a local record for rainfall here - over 8" in 24 hours, a number as an amateur weather "bug" I can't
even get my head around, except for the fact I actually witnessed it.
I've never seen rain like that in my life - nor the lightning show that appeared in the middle of the night,
where continuous lightning strikes hit out here in the immediate surrounding foothills for over 15 minutes
straight.
Unbelievable - yes, "biblical".
My spending 7 hours "in the bucket" today on my little 30hp 4wd diesel tractor was the 3rd time in as many
days that I spent repairing the little one lane road out here that serves our neck of the woods, plus our own
1/4 mile long driveway that comes up the ridge here.
Yes, it's officially a county road - but they aren't coming, at least not for a week or more, so...
I'm actually the youngest out here on this road plus I have the ability and tractor to do the job; that makes
me the default "road department", at least around here.
(That 8" of rain was on top of each of two previous days' precursor storms, each of which were isolated and
destructive).
As tired and sore as I was (and still am), all I could think of when I was out there grinding away again was
those poor souls in other places who never saw this coming, who lost their loved ones or their own lives...
sobering ****, right there.
Here's a couple pics of some of our own road carnage - keep in mind, the pics "flatten" the 3D effect of
what you see. The washout was almost 3 feet deep in parts, and that's on a 25 year old well based road:
I was up to my waist down there at the bottom. Took a while to gather things up again; there
was no driving on the road in anything other than the tractor - and it was up to the grille at times.
Yee ha!
Again, the pics don't do it justice. See the riprap at the left? The top of that
used to be level with the road....
My supervisor was on scene to keep me on task as well:
Sasha the Cairne Terrier, my steadfast companion for 11+ years now. Storms terrify her, a result of her
being thrown out into the wild the first year of her life by some ********....
but she's right there with me the whole job, EVERY job, without fail.
I finally got everything put back together several hours later, including clearing the bridge down by the
highway (built to 50 year flood event height, yet totally submerged this morning) and I finally was able
to call the job done when I knew all the elderly folks out here could get in and out (as could emergency
vehicles, if needed).
In the end, it'll probably cost me a grand or so for gravel and such eventually - but everyone out here
got their debris cleared, nobody got hurt and we were blessed nothing worse happened.
Oh - and you guys talking about getting metal roofs in some of the posts?
I HEARTILY concur - I built everything out here with them and the house itself, when it came replacement
roof time a few years ago, got the same as well. Zero damage to report from all of these storms as a result.
Wife and pup are safe, Fred is safe and any property damage has been mitigated.
I've never feared flooding up here at 1700' elevation (by intent!), but you still gotta get down off here
sooner or later to deal with the rest of life...
Again, prayers for all those who didn't fare quite as well. Awful stuff for sure.