Yesterday, around 4:30 PM, a long line of storms formed on the radar to the northwest of me. Severe storms. And they popped up out of nowhere. Before that, it had been 103 degrees outside with a heat index of 116 (no, I'm not kidding). I had slept until around 1:30 PM because I wanted to avoid the majority of the heat by staying downstairs and sleeping. When I came upstairs, I turned on the AC and let it run; it was all I could do to keep it about 88-90 in my house.
As an aside, I received my electric bill from May 17 to June 22 in the mail yesterday, as well -- and it was about $50. No, seriously, it's less than it is for me to pay my cable internet bill every month ($57). I tried to figure out why, when I realized that for a week of that (after graduation) I was in Omaha, and therefore wasn't using electricity, and up until the past week and a half or so, I haven't needed to run the AC -- just the fans. It's the lowest electric bill I've had for a year. This doesn't really matter, of course; by running the AC a lot this week, I've probably doubled that bill for next month already. But, because my bill is low this month, I'm fine with running the AC a bit more when it needs to be ran...such as when the outside resembles the surface temperature of the sun.
Anyway. The storms sprang up out of nothing around us on the map, and made a slow progression toward me and the Wichita area. I watched as it steadily got darker and darker outside (yet no less hot) as the storm front moved in. By 5:30, it was really dark. By 6PM, it was as dark as if the sun had already set -- I had to turn on lights in the house because it was pitch black in here. I went outside onto my balcony to have a smoke and watch it roll in; my balcony points due north, and by looking up to the left, I could see the clouds coming.
I don't know how often you folks watch storms roll in, but I wished last night that I had a higher/better vantage point. I went in and out a few times, checking the radar and warnings each time, until I saw that the latest update said that there were 70mph recorded winds and 1-inch hail.
Now, hail an inch in diameter is nothing. That's like, quarter-sized hail. I've seen golf-ball and larger-sized hail living here in Newton before, and even that hail doesn't usually do a lot of damage (if any). But when you combine even smaller hail with 70mph winds, each hailstone becomes a bullet. I got my keys and put the car in the garage as a precautionary measure, and then came back upstairs to continue to watch the storm roll in. A few of the neighbor guys were out in the street talking, and I watched them turn around and look up at the clouds to exclaim "whoa, shit!" before calling their kids to come from the neighborhood houses.
Less than two minutes later, it began. First as some thunder and light wind, and a few flashes of lightning up in the cloud banks. I watched it with curiosity and wonder; there are few things I enjoy more than watching thunderstorms. There's something about the raw power of nature that I've always admired -- the ability to see a destructive force form out of nowhere and tear ass through an area.
And then the trees started falling.
I'm not making this up.
Those 70mph winds the weather forecasters were talking about were not lies. They're called "straight-line winds," and in some places, during the storm, got up to 80mph. I am not joking.
These straight-line winds ripped through my neighborhood. The tree on the left side of my driveway, in the neighbors' yard, had a huge branch blow off of it. Hm, I thought. Strong winds. And then half of it came down. Up the street a few houses, a large tree in their front yard toppled over as well, snapping into several pieces that blocked the road. I'd never seen wind like this before. It looked like my neighborhood was going through a tornado. And, of course, throughout all of this, I was standing outside on my balcony watching it happen. Because that's safe. But I wanted to see everything as it transpired. For about thirty-five minutes, it was storm-hell on earth on my street.
I went back inside and went out onto my back deck -- there are big trees in my backyard, including a huge cottonwood tree, and another tree in the neighbor's yard behind me that hangs down and droops over the power lines. I still had power and internet -- I never lost either one, remarkably -- but I wanted to see if the winds were damaging those trees. Luckily, they weren't. From the angle of the storm's attack, the houses and larger trees were in the way of those ones being damaged by winds.
And then, suddenly, it was gone as quickly as it had arrived. It was still dark as night outside, but the storm had moved out of Newton and was on its way south into the Wichita area. Aside from a few rumbles of thunder here and there and a bit of rain, it had left, and the winds stopped, making the air eerily calm and still. The temperature had dropped about fifteen degrees, but it was over. At least here, anyway.
Wichita wasn't so lucky. As of this morning, 12,000 people in Wichita are still without power, and photos began pouring into newsrooms of damage done by the storms as they rolled through the city. The tornado sirens were turned on down there in some places, not because of tornadoes, but because of the 70mph straight-line winds. One of my friends had her windshield broken by a tree branch. Several friends still in the area are still without power. It was, apparently, worse down there -- Parker told me that central Wichita "took it on the chin." Westar (the power company here) put out a statement that they don't expect power to be restored in most places until tomorrow morning.
Surveying my place, though? I was lucky, apparently. There are trees down and branches/leaves scattered everywhere, but none of them are on the house, in my yard, or were any of the trees I have (there's a huge pine tree in my front yard, which acts as the dividing line between my yard and the neighbor to my right; it was fine, with no lost branches or damages). My yard and driveway is a mess with branches and leaves, yes, but most of them are smaller ones which I could simply pick up or mow over with the lawn mower the next time I mow. I don't see any shingles in any yards around me, so apparently my roof (and the neighbors' roofs) didn't suffer any damage. I can better see the extent of the tree damage now, in daylight, and while it's extensive to the trees I mentioned earlier, nothing was uprooted or outright destroyed in my neighborhood (at least not that I can see from my house, anyway).
As for the bullet-hail that was in this storm, it didn't hail here at all. I am glad, however, that I put the car in the garage, as I would've risked damage to it by leaving it out with those trees coming down everywhere. A while ago, I looked out front to see my landlord's truck sitting in the neighbors' driveway; I'm guessing he came by to survey the storm damage. He's gone now; I didn't see him personally, but I'm guessing he'll be back with his trailer to haul away all of the tree branches and pieces strewn about the street, as he owns all of the houses on my street but two.
I, meanwhile, went to bed after the storms were over. It was much cooler, and I was able to actually sleep, and sleep I did -- I slept from about 9:30 PM to around 6AM. This morning it's 73 and beautiful outside. The weather forecasters were right, apparently, about cooler temperatures -- it's barely supposed to hit 85 after today, and the cooler (read: actually normal) temperatures are supposed to last for the next week or so. This means that I shouldn't need to run my air conditioner that much, if at all. I don't need to when it's only in the 80s outside, since it really doesn't do any good at that point (it's only really necessary when it's 90-95 or so, and even then it'll only keep it at about 85 or so in here). Today the forecasted high is 93 or so, though as that's ten degrees cooler than yesterday, I'll take it.
Once I'd been up for a few hours this morning, I decided to go to Walmart. I needed cigarettes and the cats were completely out of litter (I barely had enough to refill the pan this morning when I cleaned it). I figured this would also let me see if there was any real damage around the town, because surely my neighborhood couldn't have gotten the worst of it.
And it didn't. Not by a long shot.
It's about three miles between my place to Walmart, with about 3/4 of that being driven through neighborhoods and residential streets. In this three mile transit, I observed the following:
- Many more trees down and/or snapped in half; there were almost no trees that hadn't lost large limbs or suffered some pretty serious damage.
- Power/cable/phone lines down.
- Power poles snapped in half and being replaced by worker crews.
- 100-year-old trees uprooted or broken in half. There were several of these, including one in the elementary school grounds about half a mile from my house.
- Garage doors blown in or blown off their hinges and hanging at angles.
- Roof damage on many houses (not mine, whew), some of it pretty severe.
- Windows blown out of cars and houses.
- People cleaning up the massive amount of debris strewn everywhere.
It looked like a tornado blew through the town. I'm not kidding. Streets are closed off because massive trees are down on them, or because power lines/poles have snapped. I totally believe and understand why 12,000 people in Wichita are without power today, if the storm hit down there as hard as it did up here.
City of Newton cleanup begins on Monday and could take up to three weeks, according to the press release put out this morning. Cleanup crews will be covering the entire city and picking up any branches/trees put on the curb in neat piles, to take them away and rid the streets and yards of them. I'll more than likely go out tomorrow morning and clean up the yard/driveway and put my stuff in a pile for them. My neighbors on the other side of me, who lost a large part of the tree to the left of their side of the duplex, are outside putting that stuff in order now. It's also 90 degrees right now, and I have no desire to be outside in the sun doing that shit in my own yard, which mainly has branches strewn about from that tree and one or two others in the three-or-four-house vicinity. I'll do it in the morning when it's cooler outside, also secretly hoping that since the tree is on my neighbor's side of the duplex, he'll pick up the scraps that blew into my yard as well, and all the shit that blew into my driveway.
For now, though, the storms have passed and life returns to normal, much as it was prior. The temperatures are supposed to be cooler -- much cooler -- over the next week or so, and it's not supposed to rain again until after the 4th. My life goes on as well; I will keep searching for job openings and positions to apply to, I will still do household chores and pay my bills, and when necessary, I will mow the grass or do some shopping or cooking.
Moral of the story: always be in awe of the power of nature, folks. Because it is an awesome power.
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