Flashes of Panic

A few hours after we left for the wedding, our area was hit by a fairly intense thunderstorm. Judging from what I’ve seen on this morning’s run and a short errands walk this afternoon, nearly every tree shed something, from small twigs to entire limbs.

We ducked a bit of a disaster ourselves. Our driveway was home to one of those pipe-framed tentlike pseudo-garages, which is actually visible in the satellite photos if you know our street address (and know that Google slightly misplaces our street number.) In the windstorm it apparently caught a rogue gust and went airborne. According to the landlord’s narration this morning, it clipped a corner of the house, chipping a single shingle. It then hurdled my car cleanly (not a scratch) but took out a section of picket fence immediately behind the car. It then vaulted a significantly higher chain-link fence at the back of our yard, missing a large collection of potted plants in the neighbor’s back yard but eventually smashing a second-floor window and coming to rest standing on end beside his house.

The neighbor and our landlord disassembled it with a Sawzall, and it’s now awaiting the week’s garbage collection next to our house.

This episode strikes me as particularly fortunate considering this neighborhood’s proven history of car disasters for absent drivers. On the other hand, had A’s car been parked where it usually is, perhaps airflow might have been sufficiently different that the canopy would not have taken flight?

Now Playing: Almost from All of Our Names by Sarah Harmer