Holy cow!

[GunnyMack]

What a storm here last night!
Power went out about 10pm. With my Mom needing a lift chair i had to go out and start the generator. About an hour later I had to go back out as it sounded like it was going to blow up. Seems the mud daubers had packed mud all around the gas cap and it was vapor locking. When I turned the cap lose I got a shower of gas & fumes in the face. I kind of expected that so I had turned my head away.
Power is still out. Cable just came back.
About the storm, the most lightning I can remember in a long time. Rain, at least 3"! Limbs, trees down all over- town looks like a war zone.
Still raining but much lighter. Waiting for it to stop to go help the neighbor clean up a tree in his driveway.
Gonna be a long day with less than 4 hours sleep!

[AJMD429]

.
Glad you got through it ok.

[Bill in Oregon]

Will, sounds like what you got was much worse than what we got here in Grant County NM. A large and powerful cell drifted south out of the Gila National Forest. For a short while I was seeing five or more strikes a minute. We had a torrential downpour, but only lasted maybe 20 minutes. Rain gauge says .6 inch -- nothing like your three inches, but a blessing here in the desert. Glad you made it through and could be there for your Mom.

[gamekeeper]

Glad you're ok Will, our weather has been all over the place lately hot days then thunderstorms followed by high winds and showers.

[GunnyMack]

Thanks guys, I have been 'fortunate' enough to have been through numerous blizzards, hurricanes and for the most part we have come away without damage.
Hurricane Sandy had to have been the worst, 14 days without power, had the cut my way out as lots of my old oak trees fell.
Sandy made this storm look like nothing!

[piller]

The Creator put a lot of power into this planet. Glad you are OK.

[geobru]

Living in Washington, I thought I had seen some pretty good thunderstorms. One time a lightning bolt hit the transformer feeding our house in eastern Washington. After I moved to the west side in the Cascade foothills, A storm came through and pummeled the mountain about 1.5 miles north of my house. There were six to eight strikes per minute, I opened the curtains facing north and spent the next several hours watching the lightning. That being said, I found out that I didn't know what a lightning storm was until I experienced thunderstorms in Minnesota and Florida.

I was on a business trip to Florida and the rain came down so hard that in ten minutes there was an inch of water flowing through the hotel parking lot. It was literally like being in a shower. I watched a bolt hit the ground in a forested area that pulsed about five times over several seconds. What ever it struck had to have been blown apart.

In Minnesota, my wife was flying in from Minneapolis after visiting her family in Utah. We lived about 25 miles west of Duluth and a hot thunderstorm was passing through. She called to let me know that her flight was delayed due to shutting down the Duluth airport and they weren't sure when it would reopen. After a few hours she called and said they were going to try to fly to Duluth, so I drove into the airport. On the way there, the entire northern horizon was a light show of continuous lightning strikes. I've never seen anything like that before or since!

I am glad that you were able to weather the storm and came out in one piece. Theres nothing that makes one feel more small and helpless than being in the middle of a natural phenomena that has absolute control over you. I can't even imagine what it would be like in a hurricane or tornado! For me, the eruption of Mt. St. Helens taught me that lesson. When nature speaks, you have to listen!

[GunnyMack]

Hurricane Sandy was a real eye opener! Hours on end it sounded like a freight train, this area had straight line winds guesstimated at 160+ mph ( the weather monitoring station was designed for 150). Those winds blew whole hillsides of trees down. When I got out of bed the next morning I had 6 or so trees down. A hickory hit my shop, it must have move slowly as it hit but didn't go smashing through. It rested gently against a rafter, probably saved my shop! An oak the top snapped out of hitting a second that uprooted, across the driveway taking out the power lines which pulled the pole enough to break it and the transformer burst all over my paved driveway. Lived like that 14 days! I took a walk around the neighborhood that morning, found a dollar bill plastered to the road, Washington up. I framed it as a memento.
When I lived in Colorado I used to love watching the thunderstorms grow over the front range, a real sight to see as sometimes they would start to funnel! Saw a couple tornados- those are scary!

[.45colt]

As I get older these weather extremes really take a toll on My wellbeing.snowstorms , ice storms and rain. a month ago we had a horrible storm come across Lake Erie producing tremendous wind and rain that did a lot of damage all over the county. of course a tree took down a power line and I had to fire up the generator for the third time this year. last weekend Kellys Island in western Lake Erie Got 13" of rain in one night. Makes Me nuts. when I was Younger it seemed like no big deal. .