Changin' Winds

Thursday was unreal. We knew a wind storm was coming through but had no idea it was going to be a hurricane minus the rain! We woke up at 6 a.m. to howling wind that had kept most of our neighbors up at night. As Dal went to get in the shower, the power went out. So we went back to bed for a while. I found our flashlight and luckily had some juice in my cell phone to at least find it.

Dallin manually opened the garage door and I called into work to let them know I'd be late as I waited for the power to come back on so Mags didn't freeze. Plus, she's terrified of the wind. The gusts of 102 mph rattled the garage and I thought the window in there was open but now, it was just drafty.

Did I mention it was garbage day in our neighborhood? Our garbage can blew away and I have no idea where it went. One (that wasn't ours) ended up on our doorstep so we kept it. I cranked up the fireplace and around 10 started on my way to work. I couldn't even open up my car door the wind was blowing so hard and I had to keep my eyes closed so debris didn't fly into them. When I made it on the road, I'd wished I'd just stayed home.

I got to the top of Park Lane and there were semis tipped over, traffic lights dangling, no street signs and my car was shaking so bad I thought I was going to blow over. There was hardly anyone on the freeway which made for some picture-taking opportunities. Davis County was hit so hard, the freeway was shut down northbound.

When I got to work they thought I was crazy because the wind wasn't that bad in Salt Lake. I showed them the pictures and we read the news stories. Someone even said the yellow lines on Legacy Freeway were even blowing off. I left work early as Facebook posts from neighbors said their windows were shattering from the wind and headed for home to assess the damage.

Luckily our house was spared any damage. The windows, garage, roof and siding were all fine. A huge shout out to the neighbor kids. The stay-at-home moms had all their kids out in gloves cleaning up all the trash. Yesterday a lot of people were out putting the the wood chips back in place.

Today church got canceled so we could help with clean up efforts and prepare for the next wind storm that is supposed to hit tonight. This one isn't supposed to be AS bad (only 75 mph winds) but we know where our flashlight is and feel prepared. Some poor people STILL don't have power and may not get it if this storm is bad. We were luckily only without power for about 5 hours.

It's just been so weird. It looks like a war zone. I lived in SLC when the tornado came through and this even seemed worse. So strange. Signs of the times, eh? Everyone stay safe and warm!