Wow. What a storm!

Let me set the scene. My brother, Guy, and his family were staying with us for a couple of days. That means we had 10 extra people in the house. We were enjoying a day of relaxation when the sky started darkening, and we heard tornado sirens go off. So, we (meaning Guy) finished up making dinner and started keeping an eye on the weather. Soon, it was nearly as dark as night, and the rain was pouring down while the wind was whipping like crazy. The the hail started. Oh, the hail! I've never seen so much hail from a storm. Luckily, they were small hailstones. At some point, we decided that we should all get in the closet (only interior lower-level room with no windows. We managed to fit 14 people in that closet! LOL. We couldn't even see out the windows because of the hail.

Later on when it was finally over, we went out to survey the damage. It looked like it had snowed. And when the air started to warm up again, there was a ground fog from that warm, moist air flowing over the ice on the ground. Many of my plants were turned to mulch. The yard behind ours was a lake. I found out this morning that many of my friends had trees fall on their houses, and our church suffered quite a bit of damage to the surrounding buildings.

We ended up being without power from 5:30 last night until about 7:30 this morning. I guess this is a good time to live in a neighborhood with tiny, non-threatening trees.

Argh! My pictures won't upload!