This morning we started getting some rain. Hurricane Michael, which I hadn't been paying any attention to, had come ashore on the Florida panhandle, crossed Georgia and in no time at all was in my neighborhood. I tried to get a picture of the rainfall but that's not easy to do:
So I tried again:
Better, but I had work to do. I went to work in my shop with the garage door open, and I was getting stuff done. Had to sweep out the water occasionally, but it wasn't bad. Back inside the house my cat was playing it safe in his paper bag:
That's his concerned expression.
Right around 5 this afternoon stuff started getting real. I was sanding a piece of wood and water kept spraying on it. What the hey? So I turned around and this is what I saw:
It was raining like a son of a gun and the wind had picked up significantly. I made some videos of the trees blowing around but as I was recording the action I started hearing trees snapping. That's never a sound one wants to hear. First - the Bradford pear in my front yard:
Then my neighbor's tree two doors down snapped with a large crack as I was making a video. Next, my neighbor across the street had a poplar tree start shedding limbs:
That limb punched a hole right through the hood of a car he had parked in his driveway. His storage shed out back was hammered by another falling tree. It was bad for a while, but luckily the hurricane blew out as fast as it had blown in and left us to clean up the damage.
This is the sky after the rain stopped:
Thus ends the story of Hurricane Michael. Now the work begins. I will have to clear the Bradford pear limb before I can leave my house, then I will spend days dragging brush, again, build a massive burn pile, again, and then - FIRE!
Tonight, rest. Tomorrow, labor.
