Wind and Lightning and Hail, Oh My!

This is shaping up to be an interesting day. Pooring rain, I expected that. Wind, I expected that. I had planned to spend the day cleaning the house. Maybe I'll get to that later. Pretty much everything else that's happened today I wasn't expecting.

Took Ruby to school in the car today and parked about half a block away and walked her to class. The wind was catching our umbrellas and turning them inside out. The wind grabbed my umbrella and knocked the support pole on it into my forehead. Ouch. Tried going to the ATM to make a deposit, but was thwarted in my effort because the ATM wasn't working and the bank didn't open until 10:00 today. It was about 8:30 at that point.

Headed back home, trying to avoid waterlogging the car in the giant puddles and dodging the palm fronds that were all over the road. Got home to discover the asphalt roofing on one side of my shed had blown off in the wind and was hanging down the front of the shed, while water pounded down on the sheathing and went into the shed through the exposed ridge. I tried to deal with this myself, but only had a small step ladder and that stuff is heavy (and we are talking about a 16 foot long sheet of it). It ended up getting torn down the middle. Argh.

I called my brothers and my dad and ended up going to get some tar paper and a ladder from my dad's house. Stopped to pick up a second ladder at my brother's house. Got home to discover that the roofing, which had formerly been hanging in a sheet down the front of the shed was now completely detached from the roof and was laying in two pieces crumpled on the ground, with more tears in it. Luckily one of my brothers had just gotten off work and showed up just then to help me. And, luckily, the rain took a break just then.

We managed to get the roof at least patched up enough to be waterproof and stop the deluge into the shed. Just as we finished up, the thunder started up again and it resumed raining. Well, Jacob tried to leave and discovered he had left his lights on and his battery was dead. We maneuvered the cars out into the street so we could get them in the proper position to jump his battery and while we were doing so it started to hail, and I mean HAIL. We did get his car started, though. So now I am drenched and rain and hail are alternately pouring down upon the house, intermixed with some very loud thunder that is rather close to us. I actually saw the last flash sitting here at the computer, not even looking out the window. I'm guessing it was about 2 or 3 miles away. We got that roof done just in time! It still needs some tar and some further fixing, which I'm hoping we'll be able to get to later if there's another break in the weather.

I'm feeling mighty glad I bought myself some rain boots last month. And I'm glad I got the tires replaced on our car last month, too, or this day could have been much worse. How's your day going?