After the Fury

Yesterday morning, shortly after 3:00, we were hit with an extremely strong thunderstorm. Straight-line winds measured at 78 mph caused major damage to the trees in our little town. This one was directly across the street from our house. It was planted just a couple of years before we moved here, so it was about 30 years old. Lots of the trees that were lost were much older. This is the extent of damage we had in our yard, and it's an easy fix. Greg will just nail the lattice back up. The lawn furniture in the front yard was untouched.

I don't know specifically what woke us up, but we both jumped out of bed at the same moment, 3:23. We lost power about 10 minutes later, then the tornado whistle blew. Fun times.
The power was back on by the time I got home from work about 8:30 a.m., and by 9 or so the tree across the street was gone.

There are drag marks on the streets all over town where tractors and chains were used to drag huge limbs to the dump. Chain saws buzzed all day long. The clean-up will continue as more damaged trees are cut down before they fall down.