Holy shit weather!

Wow. Wow.

I work in a bunker. My office has no windows at all, and all the walls are cinder blocks. While this is nice when the Chicagoland area is under a tornado watch, it also sort of sucks when the area is under a tornado watch. We had NO idea that the weather was so bad until one of my coworkers received a phone call...from Spokane Washington. How does that work? The Spokane caller was watching the Cubs game, it got delayed due to severe weather and then immediately the power/broadcast cut out all together. He was worried about my coworker.

At that point we all left our office and went to a window to look outside (our office has no windows, but our building has a lot). The wind and rain were so out of control that a lake of water was actually forced under the door...a second-floor doorway. It was intense.

Walking home after work, right outside my building looked like someone had hacked apart the trees. The sidewalk was covered with branches. Big branches. As I walked towards home it got better and better, less branches, just small ones...at some points, none. Until I got about a block from home. And then I saw the COOLEST storm damage ever. I wish I had had a camera.

A tree, completed uprooted from the ground. Pulled out of the ground. It's roots were perpendicular to the ground. It was a HUGE tree, an old tree. It had, luckily, fallen away from the house on its left side and into the parking lot on its right side. How lucky was that house?? But..there was a car...a car under the tree that was crunched, crunched right down the middle vertically. Perfectly crunched, perfectly centered crunch. Amazingly flattened. SO COOL. I know that if it was my car I probably wouldn't feel that way...but honestly, I have to admire the damage that huge tree was capable of inflicting. The tree had completely filled the parking lot too... I didn't enter the lot, so I don't know how many other cars had been damaged. Just the very obvious one...

I do feel a little sadness about the loss of such an old, lovely, alive tree...but stormy weather...so neat.