Flooded, No Hot Water and Feeling Blessed

The storms that lasted several days are finally over. Today was beautiful. It was warm and we saw the sun.

Yesterday was the worst stormy day I have seen in a long time. It rained most of Friday and when we woke up yesterday it was raining. Wild downpours with crazy wind. In the middle of this storm, I thought it would be a good idea to go to Target. It was the only day I really had to go to Target without the kids, so I figured it would  be a good time. It seemed like a logical thought at the time.

The storm was so loud I could hear it in the store. Loud, pounding rain and intense wind echoed through the store. It was an odd sound. I was wandering around Target, thinking I probably shouldn’t be there, but at the same time thinking how much I needed to finish organizing my studio.

I guess that we don’t get tornadoes very often. We have been here almost 8 years and I only remember maybe a few of them in the area, and they were not very big. I don’t think that we had much of a tornado warning, maybe on the TV and radio, but the kids were home playing Wii, so if there was a warning, they missed it. I know I sure didn’t hear the tornado warning. About 5-6 miles from Target one touched down. It wasn’t a very big one, I think it was an EF-1 which I think is fairly weak, but it had 95 mile per hour winds and traveled about 4 miles on the ground.

The rest of the storm caused lots of damage with downed trees and power outage. When we woke up this morning there was no heat and no hot water. We have 2 sump pumps that were running every few minutes for several days, but at one point we had at least 8 inches of water in the basement that put out our furnace and water heater and knocked over a storage shelf and floated things around the basement.

It is a good thing that it was nice today and it doesn’t get too cold at night these days. I didn’t even notice there was no heat this morning. I did notice there was no hot water though. We finally got our furnace running again. I am not sure we will need it too much longer, it kicks on in the middle of the night from time to time, but not too often any more. We still don’t have hot water. The water heater starts, but won’t stay lit. I am so glad that it has a safety shut off and we don’t have gas leaking into the house! I am hoping that it dries out soon and I can get it lit, and have some hot water by tomorrow.

Even with no heat and a flooded basement I feel so blessed. I am so sad thinking about a 41 year old woman and an 8 year old girl who lost their lives in flash flooding. The woman’s 9 year old son was rescued. I spent a good amount of time today cleaning up the basement and trying to get our hot water heater running again, but we have our lives and I feel blessed. My thoughts and prayers go out to the families of the two lives lost in our community, and to the families of the other 45 lives lost across the recent storms.