The Music of Chainsaws

Yesterday was quite the eventful day. Around 4:30 p.m. we had a hellacious thunderstorm blow in with accompanying straight line winds of between 110 to 115 mph. The news stations reported it was consistent with an EF-2 tornado. There were 126,000 households without power in the Omaha area. It literally came out of nowhere, with no warning. When the wind started to pick up I crated the dogs in the basement because we have had some nasty weather lately.

One minute I was looking out our sliding glass door toward the golf course behind us and the next minute I was screaming for Denny to help me hold the door in its frame as the wind and hail were pounding to get in. He looked out and said, "Oh my God, there's a golfer out there." I looked out and saw a figure flat on the ground next to a stocky pine tree attempting to shield himself from the nickel-size hail and pummeling winds. I said I was going to go get him and as I took off my glasses and set my cell phone on the counter, Katie pushed by me and said, "No, you're not. Grab me that blanket off the couch" and out the door she went. Denny and I spend several worrisome minutes because we could see NOTHING more than five feet across the deck, when Katie and the golfer, Steve, came up on the deck and through the slider. Both were sopping wet and dripping blood from small cuts made by the hail. Nothing life threatening but minutes later as the storm lost some of its fury we could see that it could have been.

Katie has reddened hail welts in several places

on her face, all over her back and the back of both arms look like she's been beat with a baseball bat. (The scar on her left cheek was from a dog bite when she was 7. Amazingly she never lost her love of dogs.)

Here's the tree Steve had been huddled under.

He was on the ground on the right side curled up to the trunk and would have been crushed as it was uprooted and toppled over in the wind if Kate hadn't gotten him out of there.

Apparently The Man Upstairs must have been pleased with Katie's heroics because when we looked out the front door, there was her car in the driveway with a tree limb about 14" in diameter across the roof of her car.

Amazingly, there are only a few dents in the roof, but the glass in the sunroof was undamaged. We think the limb kind of sagged onto her car instead of literally dropping on it and really causing a mess.

The little town of Valley had some hard hit areas too. Mostly big old trees that couldn't stand up to the force of the wind coupled with the rain-softened soil that caused them to uproot. A grain silo in town must have taken a direct hit, crushing the silo and knocking the boom into the power lines.

Anyway, we finally got power back at 2:04 this afternoon after spending most of the day listening to the music of chainsaws.

I am SOOOO sick of this weather

I know. What good does it do bitching about the weather. Can't change it, so why bother?

For the fourth night in the last five, the Omaha, Nebraska area has been hit with high winds and pounding rain and hail. I looked out across our deck last night and saw a whiteout swirling not 100 feet off the deck. At that point the tornado sirens went off and I'm sure Katie's cat did not enjoy being chased down the basement stairs with three poodles behind her. We had nickel size hail but no tornado.

However, two tornadoes wreaked havoc in the Millard area of Omaha at 2:30 a.m. Saturday night. Fortunately there were no fatalities.

Not so last night when four Boy Scouts, ages 13 and 14, three of them from Omaha, lost their lives when a tornado came over a hill at Little Sioux Scout Ranch about 50 miles north of us. My husband is an Eagle scout. It's kind of like the Marines. Once a Marine, always a Marine. Once an Eagle, always an Eagle. Denny spent years at Little Sioux as a scout, an Eagle and later in his early to mid 20's as a quarter master. I found out this morning when I got to work that my court reporter's oldest son is in the same troop with one of the boys who died and she is friends with his mom.

Like a friend of mine said this morning, "Why couldn't we hear on the news that a crack house got blown to bits? Why do we always seem to lose our best and brightest?"

Life just sucks sometimes.

Another good day

Cash won the 12" Novice Jumpers class again today and only needs one more Jumpers Q to have his Novice title in NADAC. I didn't have the course yardage from yesterday and today until toward the end of the trial. I was pleased to calculate his YPS from yesterday at 3.82 and today he was smoking with a 4.79 YPS. We had a minor bobble that cost us some time. When his handler gets her poop in a group, he'll do better.

Touch N Go and Tunnelers was a totally different story. As hot as it was today I presumed he would be somewhat tuckered for these two classes that ran this afternoon in the heat of the day with high humidity. Not a chance, he was attacked by a case of the poodle zoomies in TnG and that was that.

Tunnelers again bit us in the collective butt with an off course. However, his start lines stays all day were excellent. Since we struggled with those early on I was pleased.