Big, big storms last night

The storm of the year struck yesterday afternoon. I read a warning about the storm on Oakton e mail, but really didn't take it seriously. About 3pm, a little bit of rain fell, then it really started. The wind blew the rain horizontally, the trees were bending and the wind direction kept changing, moving in a large circular pattern. The rain kept coming down, hard. Then it let up. Our immediate neighborhood got off easy. I think that the worst damage was that my car's back window was hit by a branch and broke into a thousand pieces.
I decided to leave early for Oakton, since another line of storms was on the way. Driving to school, there were two large trees on the road, but I was able to get around them. There were many areas with no electricity. About 6:30, the second wave of storms hit. More thunder and lightning and pouring rain. In total I think we got over 4 inches. My larger neighborhood got hit pretty hard. Two blocks away, two catalpa trees were uprooted, one fell on a house, the other just missed it. On Forest Av, both sides of the street were covered with downed branches and large tree trunks. It will take several days to clean up the mess. Today, more rain is expected, but hopefully no more wind and thunder storms.