Vernon County, the Imperfect Storm...

The lightening began to turn orange. A strange and awful growling came from outside the house. Between lightening flashes I saw trees dancing in our woods...swaying far beyond what I thought they could do before breaking. The rumble was non-stop, the flashes were like a like watching a bad film...
Then the popcorn and cracking began. Tops of trees became missles. I ran from the upstairs bedroom with Mr. Morris under my arm hollering at my husband that the whole woods were coming down upon us. I had the feeling of utter terror and panic.
I crouched down between the closet and the bathroom in the middle of the house [we have no basement].
I kept hearing things hit the house, fearing each time that I would have a tree come through. It let up for a moment so I walked to the back door and looked out in time to see several trees come down through flashing lightening...
I kept of a running string of cuss words. I was terrified for me and for our livestock. Opal, one of our molly mules was penned up near the house and I could see that her shelter had been crushed in one swift topple of trees.

Then all fell quite and the rain poured down. There was nothing more to do but go back to sleep and try to get some rest before assessing the damage in the morning light.
We had no phone and no power for 3 days. Thank goodness for an operational outhouse. We suffered no loss of livestock nor did we suffer building damage.
We were the lucky ones.
Our neighbors lost two vehicles.
Other neighbors had a tree fall through the house and into their bedrooms.
Today looks like the first day we won't have rain, so we will be rebuilding fence and just getting the sheer volume of downed trees cut so we can re-string the fenceline.
This is what I saw the next morning:
My yard...a portion of it.

As I said, we were the lucky ones.

Thank you my son for hijacking my blog and letting folks know I am okay.