That's good to know. I know DC got it bad, but I hadn't heard much about the Baltimore area. The derecho hit around 9:30 or so in Cumberland. Mom said the windows started to rattle, and she grabbed her laptop, purse, keys, and dogs, and took off for the basement, and didn't come back up 'til midnight. She said it was eerie - all the streetlights were out and she'd never seen it so black. She could hear neighbors outside talking but couldn't see them. The TV was out, but her power was still on. As soon as daylight hit, she said it was carnage - an oak tree in the neighbor's yard - over a century old - was literally corkscrewed out of the ground and spread all over the neighborhood. Another neighbor was missing windows and his rain gutters. A third had to abandon her home when a tree took off the back of her house. They were all basically stuck up there until the fire department came and took chainsaws to the trees blocking the roads - there are only two ways down off the ridge, and both were impassable. She said it's still a mess. We've been under an excessive heat warning down here and about three hours ago, the sky went dark, and a severe storm cell popped up out of nowhere. This is the kind that stays stationary, it just tears you up until it plays itself out. We just got power back. We had a steady 30 minute cycle of hail, some of which was quarter-sized, and 60 MPH sustained winds. The whole town is a mess. It looks like a hurricane blew through. We lost some shingles, the pool and grill canopies have hail holes through them, and we just spent the last hour picking up all the tomatoes and apples that got ripped right off and scattered to the four winds. I had to wear a skillet on my head to move the vehicles out of harm's way, and still got bruised up. One of our cats who got caught flat-footed by it tried to hunker down in a blackberry bramble and got absolutely tortured. He saw us under the carport and tried to make a death sprint for us, but was so soaked and hail-beaten, he couldn't walk straight. It took him an hour to calm down. Heaven knows what else I might find when I do a closer inspection tomorrow morning. We still have piles of hail in the yard. Couple that with my sister losing control of her SUV and shearing off a telephone pole head-on last Sunday, and this has been a family trifecta I'd prefer not to relive for a while.
So, how was your week again? LOL
"As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their hearts desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
--H.L. Mencken, The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920