yowsa!

talk about an amazing storm!

first off - Andrew, Elise and i are all fine. Andrew and i were hit with 3 inch hail driving home from dinner. Andrew did a wonderful job keeping us safe in spite of arcing sparks from power lines and shredding trees. He eventually found us shelter under an overpass (after the windshield cracked in 3 separate places). Esther's (the car's) body is completely pockmarked, the driverside mirror casing broken, and the passenger-side mirror gone, but Esther survives. Anything necessary for safety will be out of our pockets to replace because the car is too old to have comprehensive coverage (and would instantaneously be totaled for any claim anyway).

The house is mostly intact. We are so grateful for our red brick. The neighbors' siding is completely destroyed. Several of our windows were exploded - basement and front screen door. Glass from the basement windows rained all over the new car (oh yeah - we bought a car Saturday) but it doesn't appear to have done damage to the car. The shutters on the front of the house were destroyed, the gutter torn off one side of the house and the outside light fixtures completely shredded. About half of the new trees may not survive. Porch furniture, bird feeders and a few outside pots shattered. The big unknown is the roof right now. We know our back neighbor ended up with at least 3 holes in his roof from the hail. We are heading up top soon to see whether we have similar damage. The damage is truly awe-some.

I am sure there will be more things found destroyed, but mostly we are just thrilled - truly beyond sunny - to be safe and not have any friends or neighbors injured (as best we know right now). All the trees that came down in our immediate neighborhood missed our neighbors and their houses - leaving no one injured or killed. yay! What an enormous blessing!

Hope everyone else is safe and whole as well. We know we cannot be the only ones in the storm's path - though the claims' agent guessed our area code so apparently we got the worst of the hail. In a day or so, i am sure Andrew will have photos up on our Flickr account and his blog of all the carnage. In the meantime, here is a picture of Andrew with some of the hail to give you an idea of the beating we took. I took it with my cell phone at the underpass. It had already melted quite a bit!