More big storms

So, I'm glad I planned out that alternate lab that can be done indoors now.

Late last night - maybe about 11:30 - we got another very big round of storms. Thunder and lightning, heavy rain, hail, all of that. I was awake, despite having gone to bed around nine, because the power went out very briefly BEFORE the storm hit, and a power outage shut off my white-noise generator, and the absence of sound is as noticeable to me as a loud sound is.

I don't know how long the outage was, probably not more than a couple minutes because while it un-set the clock I use as an alarm clock, it didn't mess up the programmable thermostat. When it came back I got up, re-set my clock, put the white-noise machine and the air filter back on.

Then the storm hit. More hail. I don't like hail; it always sounds like it's going to bash through something even when it's small. I told myself, "this is no big deal. It is small hail and you have screens on the windows so it will just bounce off the screens" until I remembered that the one window I had put the little A/C unit in never had its screen replaced. (Crud.). But apparently it wasn't bad enough to break a window, or, maybe it was that was an east-facing window and the wind seemed to be out of the north. (And yeah, the sewing room roof leaked again, like it does every time it rains and the wind is strong out of the north. I'm gonna have to get someone out.)

I peeked out the front door after the worst of it let up and it didn't seem like much had accumulated. I guess just north of me (up by campus here) they got it worse; driving in this morning some of the houses still had hail piled up in their front yards.

Eventually it let up and I got back to sleep - the storm was probably over shortly past midnight. (So the hail that was on the ground hung on from midnight to at least 7 am)

Also, the house a few doors north of me, their big old hackberry totally came down. Now that it's down, I can see that the heartwood was all rotted and crummy, which is why it came down. It looked like someone had already been there cleaning it up a bit and cutting it into pieces that could be hauled away, and further along, I saw several trucks of O G and E guys cutting branches and working to restore power....I guess I was lucky in that I got mine back so fast. (I don't think the neighbor's tree coming down had anything to do with the power outage; there are no lines near where it is lying)

I took the "alternate" route in because Wilson has started flooding a bit during and after heavy rain (construction in the area) and while it would probably never flood to the magic depth necessary to sweep away a car (shallow curbs and a drop off on at least one side), still, you never know when standing water is a warning that the foundation of the roadbed has been carved out, and I don't want to end up in a sink hole.

I had a few branches down but nothing big. Lots of leaves plastered all over the siding, I guess the wind was pretty strong at one point.