We finally got our power back on yesterday afternoon after losing it during the nor easter on Sunday morning. Didn't get to see the game because we weren't able to get everything hooked up to the generator until late Sunday as the storm was approaching. Every battery operated radio in the house was on the game, but there's something to be said about the visual aspect of the game. Play-by-play guys are expected to be artists painting a picture for the listening office. Frank Frangie is still working with a box of broken Crayolas missing half the colors. It was painful.

Anyway, I live in an area where our tree canopy is considered a selling point. I've got two huge water oaks in my yard, one that sits 15 feet from my office window that leans back over the house. It's about 80 feet tall, and the trunk has a 10' circumference. I always worry about this one in storms because they have a tendency to just topple over after being rained on and dealing with high winds for as long as we saw this time around. Fortunately, we've kept the tree trimmed up to keep it from getting too top heavy, so it stood tall. However, it looked like a bomb hit the front yard after the storm from all the limbs that dropped from the tree.

After being in the dark for nearly a day, as we were getting hit by the back end of the storm on Monday morning around 9:00, we heard the often described freight train. That shook the house and had us all scrambling, but it ended within a few seconds with a resounding thud on our roof. I ran out in the front yard expecting to see our big tree laying on top of the house, but as I was doing so, my wife let me know that it was in our back yard. The thud came from my neighbor's back yard. Two huge old pine trees were twisted about 10 feet up on their trunks, and both fell over on my roof. Fortunately, the damage was mostly contained to the eave (crushed) and exterior siding in that area that was crushed. No puncture of the roof, although there's clearly structural damage.

I feel pretty lucky as a neighbor across the street had an old blackjack oak come down on his house. The guy just spent a ton of money replacing the roof and completely redoing his garage to put in a really nice shop to work on his car and do wood work. The tree came down on the garage and completely destroyed the workbench and equipment area of the garage, but didn't touch either of his cars. The force of the tree ripped the electrical service from the house out, and started a small fire that he was out there at 2:00 in the morning putting out himself.

We had several trees out in our area, and it appears a tornado touched down in the back of our neighborhood and did significant damage to a friend of ours home, and the neighbor behind them. They're still without power as of this morning, so we feel pretty lucky.

It was a good bonding experience for our neighborhood. Everyone was out there helping clean up on our cul de sac. One of our neighbors left town for the storm because they have a history in these things of something falling and crushing a car, blowing out windows, or puncturing their roof. Wise decision as they had two huge trees come down in their back yard crushing their screened porch. We got a lot of their debris cleared out before they got home yesterday. They covered dinner for everyone last night to say thank you.

Nobody got hurt in our area, and everyone will be made whole for whatever damage they sustained. We definitely feel quite lucky.

---