03 June 2009

The Storm

As I mentioned before, I work in Philly, but commute from South Jersey every day with my sister. As I walked the 4 blocks to our parking lot yesterday afternoon, there was a light drizzle- nothing bad at all. While driving the 40 minutes home, the sun came out and it got really humid. Then something really weird and unexpected happened...

We pulled into our town and came up to a road closure when we were 1 mile from our house. As we turned the corner to find another way home, we were shocked at what we saw. Trees down everywhere, debris all over the streets, flooding, houses with trees on top of them... we honestly thought that the only thing that could explain all of this was a tornado or something! It was really bad! The weather is usually identical in Philly and our town- just 25 miles away- which is why we couldn't believe it. Philly only had sprinkles!

When we finally got into our development, I pulled into our driveway and saw that, luckily, everything was okay...on the outside. We just had tree branches and leaves all over our entire yard and street {it actually looked like it snowed leaves!} As I walked into our house I found a very scared puppy {poor Kai!} and our windows wide open. Our kitchen was completely flooded, our upstairs office had water everywhere {including on my camera and the computer!} and the family room carpet was completely soaked in 3 spots. Great.

After hearing the news helicopters flying over our house, I turned the news on just in time to see the following stories:
1) The road that we take to get home was closed because a tree fell on top of a moving car and split it in half! Thankfully, the person driving was okay!!
2) The roof of an entire warehouse building blew clear off and into the neighborhood behind it.

There were reports of tornado sitings from people in my town {they mentioned it on both the news and the police/fire radios- my BIL is a fire chief} but nothing was confirmed. They only said that it was hurricane force winds that caused the damage. Below are a few pics from the Philly news website about the storm. All from my town...
I know this is nothing compared to those of you that live in devastating storm prone areas, but it was really scary here! We {thankfully!!!} never get any tornado's, hurricane's, or earth quakes {knock on wood!}
They are calling for a similar version of the storm to come through the area again this afternoon. I just hope that I come home today to find my house in one piece...

5 comments:

Bridget said...

That is crazy, I am glad that everyone was ok, poor Kai:( We had some pretty crazy weather here in California last week. All of a sudden it got really quiet no rain, but a TON of lightning! No thunder or rain. I got some crazy footage on the video camera.

Kimberly said...

Wow... crazy!!! Is Kai settled down or is he still freaked out? Poor boy! I'm so glad everything was more or less OK at your house, and hope that no one else has major damage in the next wave of storms.

Tonya said...

Wow! I think you and I live pretty close to each other...LOL.

jenni from the blog said...

Where do you live Tonya?? Maybe we do :) I found a reader of my blog that lives down the street from me and works with my next door neighbor! Such a small world!

Kai is fine now and the second round was not nearly as bad as the first! My carpet in the family room has major damage though and needs to be replaced. Bob is calling Home Owners today to see if it's covered. We'll see...

Anonymous said...

Wow Jenni, that is crazy scary!! And that sucks about the carpet. :( Hopefully the computer and camera are ok?

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