crazy weather

Summertime around here often involves short thunderstorms in the afternoon. It clouds up, rain beats down for about ten or twenty minutes, and then the rain goes away and sometimes the sky goes on and clears up. So when a storm hit yesterday at 5pm it didn't seem out of the ordinary (except that usually the storms happen a little earlier and it's dry by the time I head to my car after work). It clouded up, rain beat down, and the power even flickered. Then the rain stopped.

But as I started to drive away from work the storm's effects quickly became clear. Debris covered the road. Trees were broken all over the place. Traffic backed up.

I was trying to get across town to pick Josh up from work and take him to get his car at the auto shop. The ride should have taken about 25 minutes in rush hour traffic. It took an hour and twenty minutes.

I have never seen anything like what this storm did to Charlottesville. I've never experienced a tornado or hurricane or anything like that, but this storm gave me a little idea of what those must be like. Most of the city lost power. Traffic lights went out right at rush hour. Emergency vehicles kept trying to weave through traffic. I saw a giant tree that had fallen over, its muddy roots vertical in the air and its leafy top resting on a house. At one point they directed my line of traffic through a parking lot because a tree was still on the power lines over the street and broken lines lay in the road.

Up where Josh was things weren't as bad. I was unwilling to hop back in the car and head into town after nearly an hour and a half, so we stopped in a shopping center to eat and get him a new phone at the Verizon store. I didn't get home until 10pm, and power was still out when I went to bed.

The whole thing was crazy.