Friday, January 8, 2016

Storm on the Beach

We had a couple days of flash flood warnings, lots of wind, and lots of rain.  The first warning I got on my phone really scared me.  It said to protect your life and move to higher ground.  I wasn't sure what exactly that meant.  We live on the second floor, should I get everyone in the car and risk driving on sea level to find higher ground?  Or do I stay in our house that is directly on the beach getting the most wind?  The storm was loud but we decided to stay, and everything was fine.

The next day the warnings were coming again, and this time the wind was stronger.  I had to pull everyone into the back room because it got so bad.  The wind lifted our entire roof up a bit in one corner, sending a layer of sand everywhere.  It also ripped off an outer layer off the roof completely so the rain just kept coming in all throughout our front room.  For the next couple hours it sounded like someone was walking around on our roof.  I think part of the roof semi detached and was flopping around.
The kids made a game of it and made a pretend boat in their room.  They were worried about the whole place flooding, even though I kept telling them that the water wasn't even up to the bottom floor yet.  We had a lot of rain, but luckily didn't experience flooding.
Here is my attempt to catch the water.  It didn't work.  I ended up just wiping it up every couple hours.  We went through a lot of towels.  Which stinks because we don't have a washing machine or dryer in our apartment.  I hate doing laundry because we have to pay for it.
After helping clean up Penelope posted this sign.  I thought it was really cute.
We talked to the owners and the next morning someone came out to do a patch job on the roof.  It doesn't look good but the rain did stop coming through our ceiling!  Tomorrow the insurance people are coming over to check it out.
Below you can see the guy up on our roof.
The next picture is of our neighbors.  See how their roof is staring to lift off? That part on our completely ripped off and took some with it.
But yesterday afternoon, things calmed down quiet a bit and we decided to venture out to the library.  While walking to the car I saw one of the best rainbows I've seen in a long time.  It is a double and even though  I couldn't capture it in the picture I could see the full arch.

The kids loved it!  They kept asking questions about it so when we got home we did a mini lesson on rainbows and how they are made.

This was a pretty big storm for here.  Bob and I seem to bring natural disasters with us when we go places.  A few years ago when we went to Japan they had that huge tsunami.  Then last summer in Michigan they had a huge storm with trees down in our yard and power out for days.  I'm just glad that we had a storm here and not another tsunami.  We would be completely wiped out in our current location.


1 comment:

Gayle Daly said...

I was listening to the nears last night about your bad weather down there and wondered if you were in the midst of it. Sounds like you were. You are very brave!!! On the bright side, it's not your home that is needing repair. It's a rental. Whew! Glad you are all okay.