And then it stormed . . .

Wow! Last night was one of those out-of-nowhere storms. Earlier in the evening the forecast was for scattered storms. All was calm, then in the blink of an eye around 7 pm there were tornado warnings (2 spotted locally) and straight line winds of 60 to 80 mph. We had chosen this night to camp at "the 80" and by the time warnings were out we didn't know if we'd be able to make it back to town so decided to ride it out there. We called our friends and next-door-neighbor to see what was happening in town and this morning we even got a first-hand report from George (my MIL's friend) who had surveyed our yard, but we still weren't prepared for what we came home to.

Rounding the corner of the house . . .

a few steps further . . .

. . . looking back towards the house.

Taken from the deck, you can see there are at least three different trees making this massive mess.

One is a big portion split from a huge oak. I don't know all that much about trees but it's hard to imagine what's left of that tree will survive. I hear Randy's chainsaw firing up now - I think we'll be cleaning up forever, don't you? Fortunately though, everyone is safe and we can't see that there's any damage to the house either so we've got a lot to be thankful for. And on a good note, my highbush cranberry (aka bird food) survived the storm and looks lovely with the berries turning.