Ass-whipping

Yes, folks, that’s right! We’re still recovering from a ass-whipping by Mother Nature. There’s no other way to describe it. Every local news station was zeroed in on what was approaching the city but none could have guessed that the aftermath of the storm would leave a picture of destruction, as if a huge tornado had bounced it’s way through town. They warned us that straight winds, in excess of 100mph would be sweeping across town. Even with no distinguishable characteristics on the radars that indicated a tornado, we braced ourselves for an experience so rare and yet unpredictable in intensity. And then it hit. The view through the front door showed trash cans and just about anything large and small, being tossed around the yard and in the street, like leaves and sheets of paper. The bird feeder, mounted on a pole, eight feet in the air, bowed down toward the ground, refusing to break, car motion alarms were going off and the giant sycamore tree next door bending in submission to the vicious crosswinds, it roots clinging to the ground and it’s massive canopy of branches taking aim on the houses across the street. Lights out! The electricity goes off and we’re powerless for the following four days and nights. The following morning, after the storm had passed, we stepped out for a walking tour of our immediate neighborhood to find substantial damage everywhere. Huge mature trees, branches lost, completely uprooted and blocking the streets all over town. Our neighbors had uprooted trees on their houses and across their driveways. Telephone poles, snapped like twigs, their power lines still attached, lined the streets and forced traffic to be detoured all over town. Countless businesses were closed for days, and weeks as utility companies, local and out-of-state, staged their trucks at the fairgrounds, the huge parking area crowded with hundreds of utility company units, waiting to be directed to the areas of town devastated by wind and tree damage. Slowly but surely, the estimated 300,000 people who were impacted by the storm, got their power restored, are starting to clean up the mess and trying to return to some degree of normalcy. Traces of the storm remain obvious in the form of huge piles of brush and sectioned tree trunks stacked along the curb, waiting to be picked up. Some of the less fortunate are still living with toppled trees in their yards and on the roof of their houses, due to limited options for removal. New utility poles stand proudly in the spots where the old ones surrendered to the wind, the lights are back on all over town, traffic returns to the streets but the memories of that traumatic night, when the raging winds swept through the city, will live forever.