The Great Storms of 2015

Texas has been getting hit hard with crazy storms lately, and the Austin area has been no exception. There's been major flooding and several tornadoes in the last week or so. Fortunately we do not live in a flood zone.

Memorial Day weekend was pretty insane. Quite a few homes were flooded. Some even washed away. Sadly, several people were killed in the floods. After a pretty major storm on Memorial Day we decided to check out the creek at our neighborhood park. Man were we in for a surprise. The creek which really normally is a creek (sometimes barely a trickle of water) had flooded so badly that it had reached our neighborhood pool. The pool looked like a swamp, the creek looked like a river, and the park was completely flooded. There were also some neat but slightly creepy clouds. I've never seen clouds like them before. Apparently they are called Mammatus clouds and are quite rare.

Do you see the lady standing at the end of the trail? Well, that trail continues to where I'm taking the picture. There is hardly ever any water in that area (it's not even part of the creek) and when there is water it's usually a puddle. Crazy!

Last night we had another big storm blow through in the middle of the night. This time it directly affected us. Around one or two in the morning I heard a crack and then a loud bang. At first I thought someone was trying to break into our house. I was actually pretty mad that someone would try to break in during a huge storm. Don't ask me why that was my initial reaction. It was the middle of the night, and I probably wasn't thinking straight. Chris and I both got up to investigate, and when I looked out the window by our front door I saw a tree completely blocking our entryway. Our shade tree had toppled over! I prayed that it wouldn't break our kitchen window or cause our roof to leak and went back to bed because what can you really do about a tree falling on your house in the middle of the night? 

This morning we went out to assess the damage. Our neighbors who live a couple houses down also had their tree fall. It landed on their car instead of their house. We've been helping each other with clean up today. Fortunately, our neighbor has a chainsaw, so we've been sawing and clearing all day. We're exhausted! 

Our yard now looks like this. Not too bad but definitely not ideal.

Sadly, we won't have a shade tree this summer (we won't replant until the fall), so our electric bill is probably going to skyrocket. But, I'm super thankful no one was injured. Normally I'd be totally stressed out about something like this, but instead I'm completely filled with gratitude that we are all healthy and uninjured.