Saturday, April 14, 2007

One Hailacious Evening

They kept predicting bad weather and boy were they right. Around 6:30 this evening (Friday night - I'm posting this late so this will probably show up as a Saturday post) the sirens went off. We keep a little closet in the middle of the house ready for tornadoes. Several tornadoes had already been sighted west of us. Then the hail started. We watched it at first, but the hailstones got bigger and bigger and louder and louder so we got in the closet. It was crazy loud like thousands of people shooting guns all at once. Two giant ones popped right through our living room skylight and into our house leaving one giant hole and a smaller hole - the smaller hole is about the size of a dessert plate.
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So we are in the closet and it is hailing all over our living room floor. (Is hailing a word?) It finally started to let up and we came out of the closet and saw the mess. It was still raining IN OUR HOUSE. I started running around grabbing things like tarps and buckets and mops (oh my!). Well My Sweetie was not into having rain in the living room. He decided to go onto the roof to cover the skylight. While this was a good idea, housewise, I didn't see it as a good idea, Sweetiewise. It was still raining and there was some thunder and lightning in the distance, not to mention the roof being soaking wet. He stuffed his jacket with what he thought he'd need and I made him swear to forget about it if he had no traction on the roof. I made sure he got up the ladder okay, but now I was more nervous than I was during the storm. I stood under the skylight watching when he cussed very loudly. My heart jumped and I'm like "WHAT!?! WHAT!?!" He said, the duct tape wasn't sticking. I yelled "Would clothespins work?" He said, "No, what about alligator clips? Don't we have some?" Well they're called "binder clips," but I knew exactly what he meant and ran around gathering some up. I then ran out in the rain and threw them up to him, one at a time.

They worked fine. For a while. Then the wind picked up. My Sweetie found some more somewhere and went BACK onto the roof and added the other ones. That was several hours ago and they are still holding, but it is supposed to be very windy tomorrow. He hasn't been in the attic yet to see if there are roof leaks. He'll do that tomorrow. We were pretty much spent at this point, but I cooked dinner. He also spent a lot of time on the phone with our insurance company. They were overwhelmed with calls. I told him, well if they want to take their time, they just may end up replacing our flooring in here. There is hardwood AND carpet under the skylight - it's where they meet. The skylight over the kitchen table is also broken, but only on the outer layer - I didn't even know they HAD two layers, but the skylight in the bathroom made it through unscathed. There may be just one dent in my truck, but it was getting dark and it was hard to tell. My daughter's car was here, because she met her date here, and I think it made it, but daylight may bring a different story (like with my truck).

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I was glad the cats were in their room this whole time, but I was afraid old Jake (the eighteen-year-old) might have had a heart attack. He is very weather sensitive. After we got back to some semblance of normalcy, I let them out. They were thrilled with all the strange stuff and loved playing with the tarp. I'm just glad we're all okay. I saw pictures of the tornado damage on the news, and it was awful: 18-wheelers tipped over, buildings flattened, the whole roof of a church gone. As of 10:30 p.m., there was only one death reported, but several injuries. It could have been worse. And now we have two holes in our house.

11 comments:

Jo said...

Omigod... Geewits! That's incredible. After all that work you just went through fixing your shower, now you have to go through this. I hope you guys are okay. What a shame!

I'm going to check the news to see what happened.

Keep us posted.

Josie

Lone Grey Squirrel said...

Wow. Glad you are all OK. This is a big thing that happened.

geewits said...

Josie,
Yes, I guess I will have to go back to dealing with claims adjustors, contractors etc. My husband has already been to Lowe's today to buy some stuff for a sturdier temporary cover. Now he's out in the yard blowing leaves. The tree leaves, they are everywhere!

Lgs,
Thanks. It was pretty scary. I followed my husband around like a puppy the rest of the night. Some Friday the 13th, huh?

Jo said...

Geewits, the storm was just reported on our noon news, with pictures, and my gosh it looked devastating! It showed the 18-wheelers tipped over.

Josie

geewits said...

Josie,
Yeah, we looked at my daughter's car and my truck in the dark Friday night and thought they were okay. In the bright sunlight of Saturday - not so much. My truck was parked right up against the south side of our house and most of the hailstones seemed to be flinging down at an angle from the north, so it was just a bunch of dings that we can live with, mostly on the top. Who can even see the top of a truck? But my daughter's car is bad. It is dinged all to hell and her windshield is cracked in two places. Oh, well.

Ian Lidster said...

That's a very frightening scenario. My God! I guess your gratitude has to be that you only ended up with a couple of holes in the house, but even so. Your description was riveting. I went through the outer fringes of a hurricane in Hawaii one year, so I can empathize to a degree. I do not wish to repeat the experience, and the residual effect is that strong winds still thoroughly unnerve me.
So glad you are OK.

Ian

JR's Thumbprints said...

I can only imagine dealing with the insurance companies will be almost as bad as dealing with the storm. Hope everything gets taken care of.

Tai said...

Good heavens!! I'm so glad you're all okay!

geewits said...

Ian,
I think I'm going to be that way with hail from now on. We get hail all the time but it's usually very small. I think in future I will panic when hail is predicted.

JR,
No kidding! They did call today and give us a claim number and the weather has nice and calm, but they are calling for possible storms on Tuesday. I just hope our temporary tarp holds up until they get here.

Tai,
Thanks. I mostly feel bad for my 22-year-old daughter. She just bought the car in the last six months and it is in terrible shape.

Dave said...

I have never experienced a tornado other than watching Twister plus a few home video shows... I can only imagine what it is like to be in that situation. I am glad you are okay.

Just dropped in from another blog. :-)

Anonymous said...

Oh crap. Not only is your Italy/Ireland trip postponed, it sounds as if your sleep schedule's gonna be all jacked up again.

I'm so sorry...