31 Awesome Things in 31 Days: Thing #27—Explore Hail Storm Aftermath and Celebrate Survival with a Game Night

A downed light pole in the nearby park. Fortunately it fell this way rather than toward the houses across the street. 

Yesterday morning was exciting. Hollie and I woke first, and we immediately went to the windows and looked outside. I didn't have my contacts in yet, so all I could see were some large fallen limbs and tons of leaves scattered all over everything. The storm had also successfully mown down and mulched all the dead grass and weeds in our front yard, so our house actually seems a bit improved overall. 

It wasn't until later that David noticed the gaps in our backyard fence and the broken window in our living room (we had the second set of blinds closed all morning, so it wasn't until David realized he was enjoying a "delicious breeze" as he read a book near the window that he saw the glass on the floor and the huge hole and spiderweb cracks in the window).

Preparing for our post-hail-storm exploration expedition. Notice the closed blinds on the left. Yeah, one of those window panes is completely busted out, but we won't know it for another several hours.

This poor guy's house is always in shabby shape, but the window is now almost completely gone. There were three or four holes, and the blinds got pretty blown apart, too. We're actually not sure if someone still lives here, though there was a clearly a car in the driveway on this morning.

Downed tree limbs and debris filled the streets. You can see the city workers cleaning up the fallen limbs and trees from out of the park.

Heavy rain usually turns our local park into a pond, but it is particularly wet right now. I anticipate some visits from some cattle egret and black ibis soon. Maybe we'll even get some night herons! They are so fun to see up close in our park. 

It was hard not to feel like we were in a zombie apocalypse or something. I can't imagine what the aftermath of a real-deal natural disaster would be like. Everything was sort of hushed and grim, in spite of the buzzing mowers and chainsaws down each street. David kept pointing out the houses we would take over if we really were post-apocalyptic survivors. Watch out, neighbors—especially those of you with gorgeous front porches and reading nooks we can spy through your windows!

One of the many tragic tree casualties in our favorite park.

This one made me want to reread Jane Eyre. 

We had to make several detours in our exploring because of flooded walkways or tree limbs blocking the path.

The hollyhocks, however, were still standing. This we are pleased to report, especially since we're always trying to explain to Hollie why these should probably be her favorite flowers.

More limbs blocking the paths.

The city was hard at work since the crack of dawn taking care of large limbs crossing over roadways. Here is a huge limb that has already been chopped up and pulled off the road. 

Hollie was more interested in Bert than in fallen trees, as it turned out.

I don't know if you can see, but a majority of these dorm room windows have been smashed and covered with plastic wrappings.

These dorms were probably the most grim edifice we saw all morning. It made the school seem like a ghost town.

More downed limbs across campus.

Some siding or something that had blown off the Art Building.

Anyway, the rest of the day was spent studying (for me) and taking care of the house (for Davey). We were exhausted by the end of the day, but our good friend Jo still came over to play a quiet game of Scrabble. We were all weary from a week of summer school and a severe thunderstorm night of little sleep (poor Jo had to survive it on her own, which is really quite terrifying considering how loud the hail was and how sharp and fast the wind was against our homes—70 mph winds!). Still it was nice to socialize a bit, albeit quietly.

Documentation of life after the hail storm.

Thing #27—Go on a post-hail-storm exploration expedition and celebrate the after-storm calm with Scrabble = ACCOMPLISHED.

P.S. I realize that in light of recent real natural disasters this post is a bit ridiculous and irreverent, but it really was a big deal for us West Texans. Some people had it far worse than our neighborhood, too. Some people lost parts of their roofs, one friend had three windows of her SUV knocked out, another friend had their glass patio table shatter, and someone said their neighbor's trampoline just blew away. I also didn't mention the number of squirrel and dove bodies we had to walk around on our expedition. I'm glad it wasn't a tornado, and I'm grateful for the local weather service's periodic Twitter updates that kept us informed.