What the heck is a "derecho"?? (Part 2)

June 30 -- We awoke to find the power still off.  Now THAT was a bit unusual.  We have lost power many times over the years we've lived here, but usually not for more than 1 to 5 hours.  We had a  cereal breakfast, some fruit, and whatever didn't need heating (all my appliances are electric!).  Then we decided to take a drive around town and see what the damage looked like.  Here's what we found:

 House about two blocks from ours with a large tree on the roof

 

In the Laurel Lakes Shopping Center parking lot, the model sheds on display at Lowe's Hardware were all blown over onto their backs.

 This one was blown down the small hill behind where it originally sat.

 The rest of the shed that blew over the hill.

 Another view of the parking lot mess.

And THIS one blew down the hill and across a street!!  Amazing that no one was injured by all these flying sheds.

 Across the street from the shopping center were a series of five telephone/electric poles in a row that were pulled over or broken.  A few others were heavily leaning in one direction or another. 

 The car sales lot took some damage.

 This pole landed on top of a Range Rover!

 The broken pole fell on top of an old bank building (currently vacant).

Here's the equipment that WAS on that pole!

 Various view of Cherry Lane....

 more trees down on Cherry Lane...

and even more.

 This tree fell in the parking lot of some apartments near our home; the tree narrowly missed several cars.

 This tree is located in a field in the same apartment complex.  It split off.....

narrowly missing a brand-new chain link fence that was installed around the complex's swimming pool this past spring.

This tree fell onto a fence behind a gas station.  The blue tent/tarp apparently blew in from some other location.

 Cleaning up our yard wasn't TOO bad -- here's the first set of larger limbs we drug to the curb....

....and the first trash can of small yard debris.

This is a terrible picture; I took it at dusk out of a moving car.  But if you look carefully, you can see many balcony doors open, trying to cool off these apartments, and there are also a number of people standing or sitting on the balconies.  Can you imagine how hot it would be in a 14-story building with no A/C?  

The digital indoor/outdoor thermometer I have in my upstairs showed that at 10 pm it was 86.4 degrees outside, 86.0 degrees upstairs in my home.  Needless to say, we ended up sleeping in the basement Saturday night -- much, much cooler!!

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