It's raining trees!

As has happened many times lately, I woke up at 3ish in the morning. At first, I thought it was my dream that woke me up. But then, something happened that made me think it was something else.

Later, as I was lying in bed and trying to go back to sleep, I relaxed under the covers and closed my eyes. Then I saw a bright flash – while my eyes were closed!

I quickly opened my eyes and sat up, looking to the hallway outside of my open bedroom door. I figured one of the kids was up and had turned on the lights. But it was dark in the hallway.

Then I turned to look at the large window that is to the left of my bed. It wasn’t long before a large, expansive flash of lightning lit up my window.

Oh, it’s a thunderstorm, I thought, lying back down in bed. So I watched the occasional flashes of lightning that continued to light up my window every so often. When my husband finally came to bed, having not realized what was going on outside, he was confused when the flash lit up our room again. He asked me about it and I pointed to the window, letting him know it was from a storm. (Somehow, the storm might have woken me up. I can't hear the thunder or rain, but maybe something about the storm had awakened me.)

When I got out of bed at 5, I was too nervous to turn on the TV and computer like I normally do. I usually turn on the news when I get up so early. And even though I really wanted to turn on the news to check the weather updates, I wasn’t sure if it was safe to do so. I looked out the glass patio door and the kitchen window but I couldn’t tell if it had stopped raining. Finally, at 7, I felt safe enough to turn them both on. I hadn’t seen any lightning so I figured it was safe. Fortunately, neither of them exploded from a lightning bolt hitting the wires, or anything.

Now, I had thought this was just another storm. Nothing serious. But, oh my gosh, when I was driving Jesse to school, it looked like a tornado had swept through the neighborhood! There was tree debris everywhere, and one person’s porch arch had been knocked over, lying in the street. I had to drive around it. Some signs had been turned sideways and there were giant puddles here and there.

But the biggest form of damage was from trees! It turns out that trees had been knocked over in the storm. On Facebook, a local friend was talking about a tree being removed from her street. My husband told me he saw a tree that had been knocked over on someone’s house, and I drove over to see it for myself. The tree had actually been UPROOTED and it lie sideways over the roof of a house. Whoa! He also told me a tree had fallen on someone’s car on West 11th. I ended up seeing it on the news later on the day.

Apparently, a tree also fell onto a building at the University of Oregon, and tree damage also caused a falcon to escape at the Cascades Raptor Center. On the news, it showed other trees downed on houses, sheds and streets, and that the storm had even reached as far as Veneta, with more trees coming down over there. Yikes!

All of a sudden, I was feeling very grateful we only have baby trees in our yards. But there ARE large trees near our home. With another big storm headed our way again tonight, I’m crossing my fingers it doesn’t fall anywhere near our house or cars. And I hope our neighbors will be safe, too!