Hurricane Utahna

On Thursday, we had the most incredible wind storm out of the mountains. The wind gusted as high as 102 mph, and since we have empty fields behind our house and to the East, we got the worst of it. First of all, I have to say how grateful we are that none of us was hurt and our house did not sustain too much damage. Unfortunately we can't say that for many many other things.

Our first surprise was when at about 2 am, our shed, which was completely loaded down with 2 tillers, lawn mower, wheelbarrow and all our garden and yard tools, blew over onto it's doors. As we were contemplating how we would get everything out of it and stand it back upright, it shattered and all the contents scattered. The next morning, we found our big tiller about 15 feet from where the shed was originally and the lawn mower 20 feet away.

As we were watching the shed go, we looked out into the darkness and realized we couldn't see the trampoline anywhere. We found it about 300 yards out in the back field. Our heavy metal Lifetime play set was tipped over and came to rest about 30 feet across the yard. It took 6 adults to get it upright again but we have yet to return it to it's rightful place.

 

Emma wrote this note and put it in the front window.  "Hi, this is Emma.  I am okay, but I have lost my playground."  She felt an urgency to share how the storm affected her with the rest of the neighborhood.

In the early morning hours, we heard a big boom but we were so exhausted by that time we didn't get up to investigate. When we got up the next morning, we found that the wheel locks on the trailer had shaken loose and it had rolled out past the front of the house to the driveway. (It was parked on the trailer pad on the east side of the house, well behind the front corner of the house.) As it cleared the house a gust of wind must have caught it and pushed it over onto it's side. As the storm continued to rage through the morning, the trailer was pushed across the entire width of the driveway until it stopped about 1 foot onto the grass.

 

During the day, our 2 car garage had the bottom panel pushed in and fold up on itself and then, because of the pressure, the entire door buckled outward. Needless to say it was not functional and since the trailer was blocking the other garage door, Paul called in and told his offices to cancel all his appointments because he could not get there.
If you look really closely at the photo, you can see some wooden blocks sitting by the side of the house and a faint rectangular print on the concrete, crossing the line, where the hitch of the trailer originally sat.  The yellow thing is one of the wheel locks.

We were amazed that the only damage to the house, other than the garage door, was a piece of sofit from the deck ceiling, a piece of metal from the front of one of the peaks of the roof and some damage to the stucco around the garage.  We didn't lose a single shingle!!

Our neighbors all had varying levels of damage.  You can stand in our backyard and look to the west and see almost to the end of the street through all the vinyl fences.  Not one fence survived.  Even though our neighborhood has had a lot of damage, no one was hurt.  For that we are grateful.  We are also very grateful for insurance!

As we have thought about all the things that could have happened, for example, the fact that the trailer rolled out into the driveway before being blown over instead of repeatedly hitting the house or taking off the corner of the house.  Our play set could have ended up in the neighbor's pool or taken off our deck.  We could have lost some or all of our roof like many of our neighbors.  Things could have been so much worse.  We feel very blessed.

I will save the account of the clean up for another post.  There are many neat stories which make me feel so grateful for the neighborhood and neighbors we are blessed to have.