Sometimes Adventure happens when you aren’t looking!

Last week we had a major thunderstorm in the middle of the night.  Lots of wind, rain, lightning, and thunder.  Fortunately for me, I am not one who quails in thunderstorms, so I was able to enjoy marveling at the frequency and brightness of the lightning and also count the seconds between the lightning flashes and the sound of thunder – an indication of how close the lightning strike was to you.  (For those of you who are afraid of thunder, I hate to burst your bubble.  By the time you hear the thunder, the strike is grounded and over.  The one that will kill you will be one you won’t hear at all!)

Anyway, the strikes were so fast and furious that I gave up counting as it was too hard to figure out which lightning flash caused which thunder clap.  I did hear what sounded like a thump on my front deck and looked out the window that overlooks it.  I thought perhaps one of the plants I had put out that morning might have fallen off the table, but nothing looked out of place.  So I decided that the folded up lounge chair leaning against the railing might have been blown a bit forward by the wind and then just settled back against the railing without falling.  I went back to bed and eventually back to sleep.  We lost power around 3 AM, but it was back on by the time I got up.

In the morning, I opened my east-facing front door to greet the day to see this:

First Sighting!  View from the House.

I was able to walk around the limb to see if there was any damage to my car.  There was none.

View of Limb from the Car.

It was clearly not something I was going to be able to clean up by myself, but the trees are the responsibility of the development I live in.  All I needed to do was report the downed limb and wait for them to clear it.

Apparently the Limb Just Dropped Straight Down from the Tree.

It was amazing to me how the tree deposited its limb as neatly as possible right between the house and the car without damage to either.  I didn’t see any other downed limbs in my travels that day, although other people did report both downed limbs and some damage.

Could Have Been So Much Worse!