So Omaha got hit with a fairly crazy storm on Friday. Friday morning and afternoon were absolutely lovely. I took a nice 40 minute walk on my lunch around the neighborhoods and it was sunny, albeit a bit hot, and there was not even a hint that all hell was about to break loose. I was late getting in that morning so I was doomed to work til 5 that evening. Around 4:40 I hear my manager saying something about a giant cell heading straight for us and it would be here in 15 minutes. Now, a typical nebraska storm usually ends up taking hours to pass through the area and there was no way I was getting stuck at work for that long on a friday night. so off i ran trying to beat the storm to my house.

now, upon exiting the building it wasn't immediately apparent how dire the situation was. but as i turned out of the side streets and entered onto the interstate, I could see this giant looming black cloud that looked like it went straight to the ground. As I'm racing mario andretti style down the interstate, I call the fiance who is at a bar a bit further south in bellevue with his coworkers. I alert him of the situation and he responds that they just ordered some appetizers so he would leave in about 20 minutes. i reply something to the extent of "are you freaking dumb? that's going to be right when the storm is over your head. Leave now and race home or be prepared to hang out there for an hour or more." He decides to wait it out. In the meantime, I've gotten off the interstate and am now sitting at the intersection right before my house. Suddenly this cloud is directly over my head and debris starts whipping by to the east.

It wasn't but a second after I opened my front door that I realized that our power was turned off. I could hear the wind really picking up outside and so I grabbed two candles, a lighter, my purse, and started yelling at cash to follow me as we ran for the basement. On the way down I look out the window and see the rain hasn't started yet. I decide it might be in my best interest to get Cash to try and pee just in case we are in the basement for a while and he'd already been holding it all day. I let him outside and at this time I notice that my boyfriend left the ladder directly behind the back door (can you say projectile?) so I go out there to grab it and bring it in. Cash is running around in circles clearly really upset about what was happening outside. So we both ran in and went to take cover. I realized I forgot my cell phone (which also has FM radio on it) upstairs when I grabbed all this other stuff so I ran back up to get it. On my way back down I look out the backdoor and there is a GIANT tree limb laying right next to the porch. at that point I was feeling horribly relieved that cash wasn't still standing in that exact spot and hightailed it back to the basement. oddly enough, the storm passed in just a matter of minutes and we were able to come back up to check out the damage. I looked out front and could see that there was a street sign post bent over and I could see at least 2 down trees.

Cash and I decided to go out and check it all out and see if we could grab some pictures. We ended up walking down the street and around the block. My neighbors were all out looking around in a kind of strange daze at the damage. It really was completely surreal. No one anticipated a big crazy storm and the damage was as intense as if a tornado had just ripped through our neighborhood.

Well, I won't go into so much detail as to the rest of the weekend, but I will say that we were without electricity for 48 hours after the storm. We used it as an excuse to start fresh in our fridge and only saved some of the more crucial item. You can only fit so much in a cooler, ya know? I managed to save the halibut and the edamame so I was fairly happy. We got some reading done and our yard mostly picked up though we do have some work still to do. some of our friends came over on saturday night to keep us company and we played games by candlelight. overall, it was a crazy weekend, but we are happy that we were lucky as we were. there were a lot of people in omaha that had it much worse that we did.

and on to the pictures!

All the rain and hail were running down the entire street (it's a steep hill) and here all the hail was collecting.

here's the intersection I was sitting at watching debris fly by. It was flooded 20 minutes later when I walked down there.

here's a tree right at that same intersection.

this house is right behind me, maybe 5 doors down. there is a house under there, yes. i dont think the trees that did that much damage to the house though, so at least there's that.

and here's one two doors down from me

When we drove around this weekend, we saw a ton of things we should have snapped photos of but we were never quite quick enough to get them. lots of craziness. it's amazing more people weren't injured. and yes, people were injured. And two teens in council bluffs died in a really horrible tragedy. I'm sure you can read about it on ketv.com, it's too sad for me to relay here.

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