It got a little windy yesterday.

This is what's left of the HUGE shed that we parked our boat in. Our boat is the one with the bit of aluminum lying ever so jauntily across the bow of it. This property is only about 1/4 of a mile down the road from our home. We were so very fortunate that the only problem we had at home was a few missing shingles. I guess they weren't technically missing, as they were still in our yard.

There is also a home in front of the "shed". Fortunately, the only big damage to it was that the front eaves were snapped up and lying on the roof. The kindly neighbors who let us use the space in their shed weren't home at the time, so no one is hurt.

The beautiful subdivision just across the street and down from us took a pretty big hit, i.e. roofs blown off, entire backs of homes just gone, etc. The police weren't letting anyone in that didn't live there. There is still a squad car posted there today.

We missed most of the excitement in our neighborhood as this was happening. We were on the way home from a matinee with the kids . The theater we went to is in Belleville, just south of Fairview Heights, so I wanted to drive home via Fairview to use a Borders coupon before it expired that day. I rarely let one of those go unused. Anyhoo, as we were heading northbound on Rt. 159, the traffic lights started to go dead. That's not a road you want to be on when that happens, because it takes freakin' forever to get through all the congestion. The sky was black and the rain was really coming down, so I weighed my options and decided that paying full price for something at Borders might not be so bad, and proceeded to change direction and head straight home. We were blown about, rained on and pelted with hail for the rest of the ride home.

God must have had a hand in those annoying dead traffic signals. At just the time we would have been getting to Borders, a store in that very same area collapsed (there was a fatality involved), part of the roof was blown off of the mall across the street, and power lines were down everywhere. I think they're still clearing debris away today.

There were emergency vehicles and police everywhere as we got close to home. We were so happy to see our house still standing there. D got up on the roof to patch it up. We retrieved our planters that had blown down the street, checked on neighbors, lit some candles, had some cereal and counted our blessings.

Here is a link to a story that I found. The Borders mentioned is the very one we were heading toward!