Mighty Winds

Early evening, maybe 6:00 pm or so the skies darkened prematurely. I mean, really darkened. And the wind whistled then whipped. I blasted around the house battening windows and doors, cranked the shade umbrella contraption (what’s the proper name for those?) over the dining table on the back deck, and lowered the roman shades in the room where Griffin was napping in the hopes that he wouldn’t notice the rapidly approaching storm. Thunderstorms are enemy number one for our sensitive hound.

Boom! The skies opened up and the rain lashed vertically at the house. I literally couldn’t see out the windows. Like being in a carwash that’s gone totally berserk.

Lightning strobed and thunder exploded almost concurrently. Again. And again. Still nothing visible outside the windows, so I surveyed the house room-to-room for any windows I’d overlooked. None.

In the good news department, Rosslyn was incredibly fortunate. All buildings escaped the merciful wrath. Well, almost. Upon entering our master bedroom, I discovered water cascading from the ceiling. So that wasn’t ideal.

Once the storm passed over Essex and out onto Lake Champlain I headed outside to survey the damage. Those photos destruction/debris photos were taken then (except for the one post cleanup photo in the Twitter post.) It was clear that some of the roof slate had been damaged and two areas of the roof allowed rain water to enter the building. I’m sure there’ll be more to say on this in the near future, but for now I’m chalking it up to, “It could’ve been worse!”

Nobody ever died of optimism.

In closing, a few more photos including a fence that literally blew over, snapping the fence posts, and a gate that yielded to the mighty winds.