All Is Well That Ends

All is well that ends.

That's one of my favorite phrases, and especially descriptive of how I feel today. Hanna took all day coming up here. When I locked the horses in their stalls and gave them extra hay around 6:30 last night, it startied to really rain hard. Silk had been agitated all day, racing around the pasture and standing on alert at the corral gate. When I put her in the barn, she was so tense, her neck rigid. She could feel it coming. In two hours, we got four inches of rain. By the time Hanna left town, we had almost six inches.

Around eight o’clock, they issued a tornado warning. The storm was causing wind to swirl back in the opposite direction of how it usually travels here, so instead of moving east and south, it was reversing north and west. This caused tornado conditions for about two hours.

We watched it closely thanks to some really excellent local TV coverage (what a surprise!) and the amazingly accurate radar tracking on weather.com. The giant swirl swept just to the right of us, crossing above our neighborhood and moving north. We were so lucky! There was no way that we could get Pepper down to the basement. My mom was already asleep, and we didn’t want to wake her and scare her. I debated whether to make a dash to the barn and open the front of the stalls so the horses could run out into the corral if there was indeed a tornado and it took out the barn. As I saw the big red blob on the radar screen slide alongside us and upwards, I decided that opening the doors would only flood the stalls. Besides, the rain was coming down so hard that I couldn’t even see six feet in front of me. And the basement started flooding, so that needed our attention. I was so glad my husband wasn't traveling on a business trip as he usually seems to be when these weather dramas occur here.

When the rain stopped after midnight, the wind really kicked up. At 3 am, I woke up because it was eerily quiet and completely pitch black. I couldn't even see my hand when I lifted it in front of my face. No power. Fortunately, I had a flashlight next to the bed. We just got our electricity back late this morning. Around 6:15, I was so relieved to see two beautiful red heads sticking out above the Dutch doors of the barn when I went out to feed the horses. I knew that meant it was dry in there. The corral was even clear, thanks to our ditch clearing efforts.

The sun is shining, and the humidity is low. With each step I took this morning, walking down the driveway to pick up the New York Times, I said “Thank” “You” “Thank” “You” “Thank” “You”.