After the Storm

Well, Friday night I finally got the storm I had been longing for, and thanks to the sympathetic magic of all those storm pictures I posted, it was a monster. The lightning was like a strobe for half an hour, constant flashing in every direction. Then the rain came, and with it a killer wind that leveled trees all across the state. (Technically this event was a "derecho." More here.) My teenage children went out and danced in the first drops, which were deliciously cool.

Then the power went out. In my neighborhood it was like a hurricane had come through, with no power anywhere, and lots of streets blocked. So we struggled through yesterday without even a fan. The pool was closed because they had no power, either. And it was 99 degrees (37 C). According to the authorities, this was one of the worst power outages in Maryland history, worse than most hurricanes. Our power came back on tonight, after being out for about 44 hours, but tens of thousands of people are still waiting.

The only good part of the day was that my children, deprived of TV, video games, and the internet, played dungeons and dragons with me.

Saturday morning, with no television, my little kids were bored and restless, so we all took the dog for a walk through the woods. They looked like this all the way through, the ground covered with branches blown down in the storm.

The first of five places the trail was blocked by downed limbs. I thought my kids might enjoy helping me clear these limbs away. They did not.

Another blockage in the trail, this one too big for me to cope with.

The beech and oak tree mostly came through unscathed, but the soft-wooded, fast-growing tulip poplars were ripped to shreds.