Storm Warning

Only last week a woman came into my studio to ask if I had a gift basket with an emergency kit theme. I showed her one I had designed for one of my realtor clients that contains, among other things, a fire extinguisher and a first aid kit. She was thinking more along the lines of a gift basket with items a person would need if they were in a bad storm or flood. That may seem like an odd request, but it happens. Ask anyone from New Orleans or Florida.

Or Whately, MA, my home town. On Saturday evening, Whately was hit by a Microburst. I'm sure there is a difference between a Tornado and a Microburst, but I don't think my neighbors with the crushed cars or houses really care.

I was getting ready to go to a friends' house for a Girls' Night Out party. It was raining, hard, and there was lots of thunder and lightening and one point, the power went out. The storm only lasted about 20 minutes then the sky cleared, and the sun was shining brightly, so I left to drive to my friend's house. Twice, within a half mile from my house, I had to drive around large branches that had fallen and were blocking part of the road. I didn't think much about the situation until I came upon a tree that had fallen across the entire road. More importantly, it had taken the power lines down with it. I guessed I had found the cause of our power outage.

But again, I didn't put any real significance to what I was seeing. I turned the car around and headed for one of the other roads that would take me out of town. I didn't get far. As soon as I turned onto the second road. I saw another large tree had fallen across the road, and farther up the road, three or four more very large trees had either been uprooted or had split.

There went Girls' Night Out! I returned home and told my husband about what I had seen. He went out to see if he could help with clearing some of the roads. One thing about small New England towns, almost everyone has a chain saw. Within a couple of hours, most of the roads were passable.

The next day, I decided to take the dogs and spend some time at the studio where we would have air conditioning, a microwave, and computer access. When I got home that afternoon, we took a drive to see the damage and take photos. The damage from the storm was amazing! Houses, cars, boats, garages, barns, fences, were crushed and there had to be hundreds of beautiful old trees down. Incredibly, no one was injured. Among all the devastation, the atmosphere was actually kind of festive. It seemed that everybody was outside. Probably because there was no power for the tv or computer! When I'd stop to take photos, I'd get into conversations with the home owners or other people from the area who came to take photos and share their stories of the storm. Even the police officer stationed at a dangerous intersection told me how the road had been burned when the power lines fell. The horizontal line in the lower right corner of the photo above is burned asphalt.

This storm taught me a few things. My dogs hate storms, they shake and hide under the bed. I call them my "early warning system". Well, from now on, I am going to take their "warnings" a little more seriously. I am also going to continue to make sure we are prepared. Lots of batteries, gallons of drinking water, a non-electric can opener and I'm going to buy a camp lamp that runs on a 9 volt battery. Reading by flashlight is not as fun as it once was.