storm from hell

Whew! What a crazy couple of days. I was at home Wednesday evening, cooking dinner (!), when I noticed a little storm map on the bottom corner of the screen. It said there was a severe thunderstorm warning for St. Louis. I thought this was weird, as I had just been outside watering plants, and it was blazingly hot and sunny, without a cloud in the sky. My mom called and said the weather was really bad up north. Still weird. Then I looked out. The sky was suddenly black. Then the wind kicked in. My neighbor's trees were almost bending in half; leaves and branches were flying around violently. I watched for a minute when I heard a small knock on the back porch. I went out there to see my huge wooden market umbrella (that was screwed into a large, heavy metal table and concrete base) dragging the table around my back porch. It had come out of the base and flown up and ripped through one of the screens, but hadn't come out of the table. I watched for a while, then went outside once it headed towards the barbeque. Not the barbeque! I wrestled with it for a while, but had a hard time getting it down because the umbrella part (it was up when the storm started - oops) had completely snapped in half. I debated over whether to just leave it, but the wind was still strong, and half of the umbrella was out, enabling the wind to drag it further. I finally wrestled it down, and managed to drag it and the metal table back over the base and put it back together. It sucked.

The storm only lasted an hour or so, but afterwards it seemed as though a hurricane had hit. At least in the city of STL. I was in Key West last year after the hurricane, and it's very similar. There is debris everywhere (leaves, sticks, branches), and every other house has a tree down or a fence smashed in. The winds got up to 80+. Three buildings collapsed. There were 500K people without power, the most ever, and 1/3 of the city's streetlights were either gone completely or off. Which made travel very difficult, since people don't seem to get how to behave at a four way stops, though they see them every day. It's amazing.

We happen to be one of the houses without power, as well as my older sister. So, yesterday, I got a call from work saying power was out, but we were expected to be there, in casual clothes (this is a HUGE deal, as we're NEVER allowed to wear casual clothes, even business casual). We got there and sat around in the dark for a half hour, then the power came on. Huge disappointment. Though I don't know why, as I didn't want to go home to my hot-as-hell house. It only stayed on for an hour though, then went off for good. We sat some more, gabbing, then left at noon. I went shopping then went home to nap in the heat with my poor hound. There wasn't anything else to do. I'm pathetic.

Q and I had to pack up our entire deep freeze and fridge in coolers with ice. Hopefully it'll stay good. Ameren says power may not be on until next week. Suck! We then had to pack ourselves and the hound up to stay with my parents. They stayed upstairs with their dog (who doesn't get along with my dog) and my sister and niece. Her two cats stayed downstairs in the laundry room, and we stayed in the rest of downstairs. Quite an odd situation. But nice and cool. How did people survive before AC???

Power's back at work today (huge bummer), but the AC isn't. I'm not sure how that works. This building is a moron. Our power still isn't on, so it might be off to Q's hometown to stay with his parents for the weekend. My poor hound has to roast in my house all day today, though. Poor baby.