bloodteethandflame

This past Saturday, the area where I live experienced some pretty crazy weather.

First, it rained.

Then it hailed.

Then the wind picked up.

The combination of these three weather phenomena caused a lot of damage in my neighborhood and the surrounding area.

Though the NOAA refers to Saturday’s weather as simply a ‘wind event,’ my husband V and I watched as this ‘wind event’ uproot a 15-year old tree in our backyard, which then twisted and smashed through two panels of the wooden fence behind it:

The only reason that the tree didn’t hit the back of the neighbor’s house is that the lower branches snagged on one of the broken fence posts.

The wind also tore shingles off the roof, cracked the rain- gutters, tore off several of the gutter pipes, and two more fence panels further down the fence-line.

As you can see, the rain flooded the backyard and that white stuff in the foreground is… the accumulation of hailstones.

The hail ranged in size from peas to navy-beans:

Hail pelted the storm windows for about 40 minutes, tore holes in many of the window screens, cracked the glazing, and scratched and/or pockmarked the glass of several windows.

This ‘wind event’ also blew off most of the foliage on our hedges, and destroyed a good portion of the smaller plants in our front garden.

The rest of our neighborhood didn’t do so well, either, between all the flooding, wind-damage, and debris that battered pretty much all of the houses in our neighborhood.  Shingles, deadfall/debris, and broken fence panels are strewn throughout everyone’s yard.  It would seem that nearly everyone in the immediate three-mile radius suffered some sort of damage during Saturday’s storm 😦

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The adjuster from the insurance company and a roof inspector came today to discuss the replacement of the roof of both our house and our patio, as well as the repair of the fence.

My biggest concern was the water damage to the interior ceilings, as there is now a single crack in the plaster of the ceiling in the kitchen that  now requires a bucket to catch the thin but steady leak of water when it rains.

But we are grateful.

Things could have been so much worse, and we are grateful that only the roof and the fence were the only damages.

Thankfully, insurance has offered to cover most, if not all, of the required repairs.  Anything that was damaged is certainly replaceable.

We were shaken, but we are OK.