A Spring Storm

Okay, so where have I been?  Well . . .

Thursday night when we went to bed the weather person was indicating we might get some some overnight.  Actually, earlier they had said we could get two to four inches of snow.  WHAT!!??  By the time we went to bed, they were only saying we could get one to two inches.  Really?! Still one to two inches in April - HELLO North Dakota weather fairy, it is spring. 

Around five a.m. I woke up to a the sleet pelting our bedroom window.  The wind was blowing so hard it was blowing the sleet horizontally and it was POUNDING on our window.  I had a hard time going back to sleep so finally around 5:40 a.m. I got up.  I thought maybe if I got on the computer I would get tired and be able to go back to sleep.  All the sudden, not really - it was 6:08 a.m., I saw a flash of light through the half moon window in our front door.  I wasn't sure what it was, because last I looked it was still sleeting horizontally.  Then all the sudden there was a huge rumble.  Yeah, thunder! 

I figured the noise was bound to wake one of the younger residents of our home, so I headed back to bed to lay and wait.  Nothing. No one. So, I thought I'd try to go back to sleep, and then it happened.  The light lit up our whole bedroom and the rumble that seemed to happen as quickly as the light flashed shook the house and rattled all the windows.  Our dog jumped up and opened our bedroom door with her nose and started pacing the hallway.  You see, she is just as scared if not more of storms than the kids are.  Jay got out of bed quickly to try and guide her into Mackenzie's room, and about that time Cassie woke to the rumbles and Mackenzie was shortly behind.  We conversed in the hallway briefly waiting for Zack, but he never woke up and the lightning and thunder seemed to be done.  So, we all crawled back into bed, our own, and caught a few more z's. 

When I woke up around 7:45 a.m., when I took a quick look outside this is what I found . . .

By 9:00 this is what we had . . .

As we were sitting eating breakfast the lights began to flicker.  The so-call storm that we were only suppose to get one to two inches from and be over by noon didn't seem like it was going away very quietly or quickly.  Before Jay left the house around 10:15 a.m. the lights has flickered several more times.  I told him, "If the electricity goes off, we (the kids & I) are leaving today!"  The snow, which was one of those heavy wet snows, was still falling at a rapid horizontal rate.  I joking told Jay, he better say bye to the kids because if the electricity went out while he was gone, preaching at the noon Good Friday service, we were leaving for Iowa.  Well, as I sat typing up school assignments, the lights kept flickering so the kids told me I better go get a shower, and I did.  The weather was terrible.  What normally would take fifteen minutes to drive into town took Jay forty minutes because of the wind, snow, and road conditions. 

Shortly after my shower, while eating lunch, the electricity flickered off long enough for the TV and Directv box to power off and then come back on.  The kids and I looked at each other and thought it was a cruel joke.  This didn't happen just once, it happened three times before the electricity finally went off and didn't come back on.  It was 1:03 p.m. when I called Jay and told him to come home and say good-bye because we were packing and leaving for Iowa.  I was joking but serious at the same time.  I had just started a load of laundry and the dishwasher shortly before the electricity went out - I wasn't really planning on leaving before Monday, April 5th for our extended vacation. 

So, when the power went off, this is what it looked like outside at 1:03 p.m. . . .

There was no sight to the end of this storm that was originally suppose to be over by noon.

We reported the outage, which the electric company was closed for the holiday.  WHAT?!  Closed for the holiday? Really?!  The automated system confirmed they were already aware of the outage and there was no estimated time of service being fixed.  So, the kids and I started packing.  Actually, the majority of the stuff was packed, all but me and my stuff and the stuff we needed up until we left.  I told Jay I would pack with the intentions to leave on Saturday if we were still out of electricity.  BUT I was hoping by committing to this action, the electricity would come back on and the packing in haste would have been for no apparent reason.  Can one use reverse psychology on the electric company??

Jay came home so he could drive me into town so I could go to AAA and pick up my Trip Tik for our trip.  The roads were horrible in our little subdevelopment, but once out on the main road they were passable.  When we got off at the exit, the city/town roads were a MESS.  They were covered in slush and had about a foot of standing water with the slushy snow mix.  It was a little after two p.m. when we arrived at AAA, and they had closed at noon for the Good Friday holiday.  UGH!!  That's another whole story, maybe for another time.  So, Jay ran me around to a couple of places that I needed to go before we left town, but we were still hopeful the electricity would come back on.  However, when we got back to the house it was still off and this is what it looked like outside at 4:00 p.m. . . .

So, while Jay went in to the church, I started packing my stuff and tried for over thirty minutes to get my AAA renewed over the phone for our travel (yet another story). 

Well, after a while, Jay phoned and said he wasn't getting any good news about the power outage and as much as he didn't want us to leave it seemed like it was the best thing to do.  So, the kids and I scurried around the house trying to pack and trying to remember all the little things that weren't on the list.  I told them we needed to get it done while we still had daylight because once it was dark, thank goodness that doesn't happen till around 8:45ish (on a sunny clear day), I figured we had a couple of hours to get done what we needed to. 

By the time the sun set and Jay returned from the Good Friday evening service, we were packed and ready to leave if the electricity didn't come back on by Saturday morning at 8:00 a.m.