Derecho

On Friday night we got slammed by a derecho:  a straight, massive, windstorm associated with a fast-moving band of severe thunderstorms.  The sky was red with cloud-to-cloud lightning before we got hit by an 80-mph gust of wind.  Everything in the yard went for a ride, including Patrick's scooter and our neighborhood's transformer was one of many to blow.


Over two million people in the DC area lost power, more than a dozen people died, and we were tremendously fortunate not to suffer any losses.  Whole trees came down all over our neighborhood and Silver Spring took a major hit.


Here's one block up our side street:

And here is Will's favorite park, under trees...

To make matters worse, we lost power from Friday evening to late Monday.  The average temp on those days was 97 degrees so the house became a sauna.  Patti took the kids to Connecticut on Monday so they didn't have to suffer in stifling heat.  She was just arriving in Connecticut when the power finally came back on.