We has a wave of storms roll through here yesterday afternoon.

The boys, Dave and I were out shopping...as we walked out of Target we were confronted with a pitch black sky.  We called Shea, who was home alone, and told her that we had to run by the commissary but would be home shortly.

When we walked into the commissary, the wind had picked up.  When we walked out, it was raining hard and the streets were under an inch of water. 

I got scared on the drive home because the streets were flooded in some places.  When I say flooded, I mean the water came up to the bottom of the doors on our car.  That's a lot of water, and it feel in a short amount of time - less than half an hour.

So, we pull up in the driveway, and as we do I see that the 40 ft tree in our back yard is down.  Split in two.  Struck by lightning. Luckily it fell away from the house, onto the fence that separates our yard from the creek.  If it had gone the other way it would have taken out our shed and carport, possibly our neighbor's yard and their kid's toys and would have done a fair bit of damage.  As it is nothing really important got broken.

I wanted to take pictures of it, but Dave had left his camera at work.  Luckily I had just got a camera phone a couple of weeks prior, so I broke that out and went and took some pictures.  Too bad I don't have the right cable to download them to the comouter....but I ordered one today so I should be able to post pictures sometime this week.

I called the fire department to tell them what had happened.  The Airman  I spoke to was really cool...he and I had a brief conversation about whether the tree had made a noise when it fell seeing as no-one heard it (Shea said she heard the lightning but wasn't aware that the tree had gone down).  When we were done, the kids and I went out to check out the damage up close.  There was a big scorched mark on the trunk where the lightning hit, and it smelled funny.  Davey wanted his picture taken by the downed trunk "for posterity', he said.

Anyway, CE came out last night and made sure that it was safe, then said they'd be back in the morning to take care of the rest of it.  They were as good as their word...some guys are out there now with chain saws, backhoes and a big ass truck, cutting and dragging and cussing and spitting.

I'm going to miss that tree.  Just last Sunday Davey was climing it...well here, you can see for yourselves:

Dave's pretty happy about the tree being gone.  "Less to mow around" he said.  "Fewer leaves to have to rake in the fall" Davey chimed in.  I can understand that; it was a pain in the ass to mow around. 

I'm still going to miss it, though.