sherriknits

This post was originally started at 10:30 am Monday:

A few days ago, we had half a day of snow.  As predicted, it started raining that night.  Then we were told that we’d get wind.  They did say it was going to be a wild weather week, but I didn’t dream what we’d actually get!

Last night the wind started hitting.  Around midnight, it was getting pretty bad and hubby and I ended up coming downstairs as our room takes the brunt of the wind and it felt like the wall was going to come in on us, the house was really shaking and we kept seeing huge flashes of light (lightning, I assume).  At 1 I was doing dishes and trying to keep busy because it was getting worse and worse.  We rarely lose our power because we are on our hospital grid.  Neither of us slept much last night and it was hard not to worry about people like my mom who lives on low ground and is alone.  I didn’t know if she was at my brother’s house and didn’t dare try to call.  (wouldn’t have mattered, phones weren’t working).  We’ve heard that we’ve had winds up to 81 mph but then they lost contact with the weather service.  What’s scary is, we are totally an island at this point, there is no way in or out of our community.  A power company employee was badly hurt last night around midnight when a tree came down on his bucket and they had to cut a way through to get him to Seattle.

Excuse the quality of the pictures because I am not caring to go outside again, but this is across the street from us.  Funny how you can’t get the wind to show.

After I was looking out the front, I was horrified to see this on the side of our house!

This is our tree and it took out our neighbor’s fence.  The tree is Y-shaped and part of it is still standing but not looking terribly stable.  Thankfully, no one is in the neighbor’s house and the house is ok.  Thankfully, too, it didn’t hit our jeep!

The winds are supposed to continue through the day.  The whole community is shut down. We seem to be an attraction, though, because cars are driving by and videotaping our damage.  I can’t imagine what else other damage there is because it sounds like it’s awful.

The little imp is disturbed. He got out our broom and laid it across a shoe to re-enact the tree disaster outside.  Our family is all home and our oldest daughter and her hubby are coming over in a little while because they don’t have power.

I’m borrowing our neighbor’s connection because ours is out (they don’t care).  We don’t have tv….I’m really concerned for some of my friends in outlying areas (Dip Lady…are you there?????)  

ps  And wouldn’t you know, when I pressed save to server…our power went out.  It’s been half an hour and this is really unusual!  Some people won’t have power for 8 days but they said most will be out for 5!!!!!

Well, yes, we did lose our power and it was 37 hours before it came back on.  It is 2 am and I am still a little wired so thought I’d post more pictures, but so tired I’ll try to make sense. Part 2: The storm continued in quite a bit of fury until about 5 a.m. Tues.  It started late Sunday night.  We have talked to so many neighbors who have all said they cannot ever remember a storm that kept on and on like that.  We expected it to start subsiding at 4 pm Monday but it just kept blowing and blowing.  The weather stations were knocked out so the highest wind gusts clocked at 81 mph but our neighbor who’s been in many, many hurricanes and huge storms said it far far surpassed that so we’re thinking we did have hurricane force winds.  We’re used to wind and rain but not like this!!!  I actually considered getting the family into our bathtub at one point.  Our house was shaking and felt like we’d blow away, seriously.  One of the closets in the middle of the house kept blowing open.   

They did get a road open so we could get out of here, but travel is pretty difficult right now with many detours. 

As we lost our power, we were just starting to get out our Christmas decorations and one disturbed little imp was having fun and distracted from the wind. 

We got out a little bit so I’m going to share some of the pictures, not the greatest quality because I was just so amazed at what I was seeing and trying to snap from a moving vehicle.  Before we left, I took pictures of our tree.  This morning, a neighbor came over and told us that if we plan to cut the tree up ourselves, he is going to help.  Several years ago, hubby helped him when he had big trouble with his garage and he wants to return the favor.  How nice!  Our tree split in half, so only half came down and we do have to bring down the other half.  It was  s c a r y  during the continued storm because it looked pretty unstable. 

This is 1 block from our house.  We thought this was why we lost our power but actually it was because the whole Bonneville power system feeding our area got knocked out.

Remember the beautiful tree I took a picture of a few weeks ago?  Well, it is now stripped of it’s leaves.  I didn’t get a very good picture here but it kind of shows.  They lost tons of branches and small trees.

Not at all sure what happened to the temporary fencing they had put up around the theater but it’s not there now.  It could be in the next county.  Someone found my shop’s sign somewhere down the road.  There is a huge fan of some sort leaning up against our building and it’s hard to say where it came from.  We were fortunate but many of the buildings around us had a lot of damage.

This is next door to the theater.  This building lost windows on the front of their building, too.  It was sickening.

A few years ago, the city turned a park into a drain field and excess water is pumped here.  Some people were boating in it!  It did it’s job!

I know these machines are heavy. 

Shortly after we lost our power, we went to the grocery store.  It was crazy…packed with people and we could only use cash or check.  These are the lines.  I had a nice visit with a lady and her daughter and we shared experiences.

This is the 2nd day we went out.  We saw a line of people at the popcorn shop where we had our Knit in Public day.  We stopped for mochas and hot chocolate, so nice to have something really hot.  I also wanted to say hi to the owner, she was working so hard. After we got there, the line doubled.

We also drove up the hill to see the power lines right past the hospital.  This blocked the road in to a new community of homes.  I assume they are just stuck in there.  It’s weird when you can’t get news.

All and all, we fared well.  We have a gas fireplace insert so we were always warm.  We heated soup and chili on it and even toasted bread. 

When we got home from the grocery store, this fellow came running up the street asking if we had any phone service.  His parents are in a community about an hour away and he’d heard that their house had been taken by a river and they were on the roof.  He had phone service through our cable company, as do we, and that was totally knocked out even before we lost our power …and his cell phone didn’t work at all.  Ours worked sporadically but he couldn’t get a call out so hubby took him to a neighbor’s and they did have phones but he didn’t really get any information.  It was sickening…no way out of here and barely any communication. 

We plan to change our phone service back to the phone company, this was awful.  We also plan to get a phone that doesn’t need electricity.  Here is a crazy one, many of my phone numbers were in my computer, which I couldn’t turn on.  Believe me, tomorrow I’ll get them into my cell phone, I was just lazy and didn’t do it.  We’ll consider getting a generator even though we rarely lose power.  I think we learned a lot through this and it was probably good for us.  Our state has been declared a disaster (or whatever you call it, I am so tired) so hopefully there will be help to get this all cleaned up.  I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like because our main highway out of town will probably be blocked for 5 days.  Areas within an hour are dealing with horrible flooding.  I heard my cousin’s daughter (special needs, married) had water up to her counters and lost everything.  They also lost her, but found her at a friend’s home. 

I’m not sure what the answer is to the phone service because when it took an hour to actually get a call to my brother who lives a mile from me, that was pretty scary.  My mom came here and is still here.  If the river starts flooding here, we’ll end up with people staying with us in the next few days.  Our house is a disaster but when the power came on at 12:25 a.m. I was just too tired to start cleaning it up.  Tomorrow.

And for now, I am off to bed, counting my blessings and hoping we can get ahold of my in-laws.  We’ve had no way to reach them and that is unnerving.  I know they got winds up to 125 mph according to the little news we could get.  We probably had that, too.

It’s 2:45 am and even though I still don’t feel sleepy, I am exhausted so I’m headed to bed.