Storms

Last week we had a supercell storm come through and direct hit Rotan.  We had a very small tornado or two and about 4 inches of rain fall in about an hour.  It was intense!  Here are the girls while we hunkered down in the guest room as a shelter!  They were troopers and loved it...we made it fun and brought blankets and snacks and played farkle!

When the storm was over we looked out the door and this is what we saw...the parking lot was flooded, the barditches were full and the road in front of out house was flooded!  I have never seen that before!  

The next day we drove around some to see more of the damage and flooding.  This is where part of a road was washed out by where some of our friends live.  They still have the road closed because it tore up so much of the road that it is not safe to drive even though the water is not high anymore.

Here is the main road coming out of town...it was completely flooded still in parts, but the night before most of it was underwater!

This was a field...now it looks like Lake Rotan

This is one of our friends' barn.  They parked their farm trucks under them to protect them from the hail...not sure if this turned out to be any better

We lost power through all of this starting around 5pm on Thursday evening.  We didn't get power back until Friday night around 10pm.  It made me so grateful for the privilege of living in the USA.  So often I take for granted power, the ability to take a hot shower bc of hot water heaters, the ability to keep perishable food in a refrigerator, air conditioning.  There are so many places in the world where these are luxuries and yet I was miserable bc I was without for 30 hours.  It definitely put things into perspective.  

Needless to say, when these guys showed up on Friday night to start fixing our poles, we were very excited!