Close Call

Along with mid-summer heat and humidity comes late afternoon thunderstorms, and today was no exception. Around 6:00 PM the sky got dark and rumbles of thunder could be heard getting closer, and then the sky opened up with a torrential downburst. Suddenly there was a deafening crack of thunder and darkness as the lights in the house went out! My first thought was that the house was hit by lightning. Alex and Amanda came out of their rooms, and we quickly took a look around. Interestingly, all the lights were out EXCEPT the light in the den. While the lights were out in the kitchen and living room, the dishwasher was still running and the clocks on the oven and microwave were still on ~ and they weren't even blinking! I had a pot of water on the stove to boil, and that was still heating. The computer was still on in the living room. So the wall outlets seemed to be working fine. But the electricity was completely out in all 3 bedrooms. Alex pulled down the attic steps and took a look up there, to make sure there was no smoke or hole in the roof... all was okay up there. We took a quick look outside and everything looked fine. Flashlights are always in short supply around here, but Alex used the light on his cellphone (!!) to check out the circuit breakers. He flipped the master switch on and off a couple of times, and the lights came back on. When Mark got home from work a short time later, we went out in the yard and found 3 big pine trees by the corner of the house which obviously had been hit! There was a streak of missing bark from the top of one to about 1/2 way down, and then the 2 trees on either side had streaks from 1/2 way down to the ground. Quite a bit of freshly shattered wood lay on the ground all around as well. Whew! Nothing in the house seems damaged... we were lucky, or blessed.