Final storm report (I hope)

Well, after my optimism last night, we lost power again for about 8 hours, pretty much all through the night. Apparently the power company had to turn it off for our whole block to do some major repairs further down the line. They also sent a wood-cutting crew through who worked all night cutting down damaged trees near the powerlines; amazingly, I was able to sleep through the buzzing chainsaws and got a nice bit of exercise this morning hauling tree branches from the back yard to the front curb so the city can (eventually) chip them and haul them away. I'll post a photo later but our front yard now looks like we are preparing for a big bonfire or something. All we need is a few witches (maybe Phill Kline can help) and we can pretend we are in Salem or something.

On my way to work this morning I saw some other damage around the city. The most spectacular thing was an entire set of bleachers at the soccer stadium that were lifted, twisted, and turned upside-down. These were metal bleachers that are 15 feet tall and sat hundreds of people and they were bent out of shape like they were made of paper. The west part of town (west of Kasold) has almost no damage at all I could see from the roads, so it definitely looks like the further east you go, the worst it was. Several of the huge hundred-year-old maple trees at the park near our house were just wrecked; the treeline will certainly look changed this summer.

Anyway, the next 5 days....sunny, cold, and no storms in the forecast! Good riddance!