Wind storm

As many of you know, we had a "down-slope" wind storm on Thursday, to help issue December in with a bang. It started at about midnight and kept waking us all up. At 4am, Kaden came upstairs saying he couldn't sleep in his room any longer for the howling wind at his window. I don't blame him--I couldn't sleep either listening to it vibrate and whistle and howl. I was glad that Ben had brought the garbage cans into the garage, because we could hear the neighbors' slamming around. It was intense....and that is really saying something for South Weber--we are used to wind!

In the morning, when we turned the news on, the freeways were closed down due to overturned semis. Wind speeds in Centerville had been clocked at the least at 102 mph. I think we got up to 82. I drove M and E to their bus stop, and off they went to school. I debated whether or not to send the elementary kids. Ben tried to drive K to school, and there were downed power lines all the way there. Trees were also in the road, making it hard to get there, as well. I told Ben to just bring K back home, and I kept them all home from school. It was kind of ridiculous that the school district didn't cancel in the first place. With the spotty power coverage, I thought that as soon as the kids got there, power would go out, and the school would be calling to pick them up. It was safer to just stay put.

We rode it out, watching the neighbors' shingles and siding fly from their houses, praying that our house was holding tight. At about 1 or 2, it calmed enough to survey the damage. We lost one of the light fixtures on the side of the garage. Which is really ok by me...I have always hated those but never had a good enough excuse to replace them until now. I was really surprised that is all we lost.

Many of our neighbors lost trees, in addition to their shingles and siding. On Friday, I was in Bountiful and drove past the cemetery there. Many huge, old trees were down. I took some pictures.