I check the weather every day. Several times a day on 3 different weather sites. Yesterday there was 20% chance late in the afternoon. Nothing crazy. At 4:45 we got alerts on our phones of a tornado warning. Donny called right after that and said they were closing down early because the weather was supposed to get bad. As I headed up there it started raining. Big heavy raindrops. The wind was also whipping around. When I got to Donny’s work it was pouring so instead of me getting out and going to the passenger side he just jumped in and we left. By the time I pulled out of the parking lot I couldn’t see, even with the windshield wipers on full speed. Then the hail started. We were inching along with all of the other cars. We all had our hazards on because you couldn’t see the road ahead of you. I started panicking. I was in the middle lane with hail, cars and rain I couldn’t even see through. Donny told me to get over and turn into this big parking lot because it had an overhang. Another car was already parked underneath and then another car joined us. Just as quickly as it hit, it went away. This was a crazy fast moving storm.

Luckily there didn’t seem to be too much damage in the garden.

The wind was so bad! There were things just flying around. It was a mess.

We lost power right at 5:00. We didn’t even get hit the hardest. White Oak had thousands without power. I think we had around 800. Luckily we have my candle tray. It came in really handy.

We finally got power back around 11. The wind was still gusting like crazy. It ended up blowing our backyard swing over which has never happened in all the years we’ve had it.

It was still going strong this morning. The whirlie gigs were whirling.

The electric company is replacing the power poles in our neighborhood. We have a transformer on ours so that meant that we were not going to have power for most of the day while they replaced it. I did have fun watching them put the new pole in. It’s fascinating.

We live in the gardening zone 8. That means that we should have already had our last frost and plants can safely be planted.

And then Mother Nature said, “hold my beer”. It’s supposed to be 32 degrees the next two nights before we hit the 90’s on Friday. Yeah, that’s not weird or anything. So, I got to cover all of the plants.

The patio plants went to their cold weather home in the laundry room. The other plants that are just now sprouting and our flowers are all inside along with the seed trays.

Now to just keep Baby Ruth, our kitten, out of them.