Surviving the Derecho

 

Sunday, July 1, 2012 – Surviving the Derecho

You’d think that Elliott’s newfound enthusiasm for walking would have tempted him out of the house on Saturday morning when I announced that I was going to Lifetime Fitness.  But, no – when I left the house shortly before 9 a.m., he was sipping coffee and reading the newspaper as sunlight flooded into the family room.  On the surface, this sounds like a fairly normal morning.  However, conditions on this particular Saturday morning were anything but normal.  Less than twelve hours earlier, a sudden severe storm called a derecho had swept through our area and left massive devastation in its wake. 

On Friday evening, we had gone to bed early, worn out by the day’s excessive heat.  We were anticipating a hot weekend, but had no warning of an impending storm.  Just as we were falling asleep, a sudden noise jolted us into wakefulness.  Imagine a never-ending roll of thunder, so loud that it felt as if we were inside of a jet engine.  Then the lightning began.  It wasn’t just one flash but an ongoing series of lightning strikes, each one separated from the next by mere fractions of a second.  A few minutes later, the power flickered and went out.  In disbelief and wonder, we jumped out of bed, groping our way to find flashlights. 

Once up, we couldn’t resist going right to the window to get a better look at this strange storm.  Although it was 10 o’clock at night, the houses on the street appeared as they would on a sunny afternoon, thanks to the rapid-fire lightning flashes.  The branches of the trees all around us were swaying wildly in the wind, and the roaring continued unabated.  Rain was coming down, but it seemed minor compared to the severity of the thunder and lightning.   It was more than thirty minutes before the beast of a storm gradually subsided. Thankful that no trees had crashed through our roof, we went back to bed, but even then, we heard an occasional clap of thunder or an enormous booming crash.

Without electricity, it became eerily dark and quiet once the storm ended.  We fell into a troubled sleep, not knowing what morning would reveal.  Even before I ate breakfast on Saturday morning, I checked the sump pump in the garage.  Without electricity, we’d have to bail manually if it was full, but all was well.  Then I opened the front door.  As expected, the steps and the yard were littered with branches and limbs tossed around by the powerful winds.  But we were lucky compared to our neighbors across the street.  One of their large trees had toppled over and was lying across their driveway and the steps up to their house.  Several of its larger limbs had struck their roof. 

Next, I inspected our forest-like backyard.  All of the damage appeared insignificant until I walked towards the very back of our property.  That’s when I saw a towering tree sprawled horizontally near the back fence.  When I got closer, I saw that the roots of the tree began in one neighbor’s yard, stretched across our yard, and extended into the yard of the neighbor on the other side of our house.  Seeing the height of the tree, I could only breathe a sigh of relief that it hadn’t fallen in the direction of our houses.  

With no air conditioning, no internet, and no phone service at home, I decided that Lifetime Fitness would be the best place to spend Saturday.  After I made coffee for him, Elliott refused to budge, so I left him at home while I went for a quick workout.  When I came home, it was a shock to find him bundled up in a sweatshirt, hunched over a book with a magnifying glass.  At that point, the family room was shady and still relatively cool.  Since Elliott was fine, my thoughts turned next to all the food that would spoil if the power didn’t come on soon.  I started pulling things out of the refrigerator and freezer and constructed an eclectic meal of the precious perishables.  Earlier that day, the scale at the club had told me I’d lost a pound, giving me the perfect excuse to eat the ice cream that was melting in our freezer.  I don’t normally eat ice cream, but these were Trader Joe’s ice cream sandwiches, mint ice cream between two chocolate cookies, and I couldn’t let them go to waste. 

We had a restaurant reservation for dinner but I had no idea if the restaurant was open, and I couldn’t call to find out because the phones weren’t working.  Around 5 p.m., trying to ignore the sticky heat that was creeping into the bedroom, we got dressed up to go out for a dinner to celebrate the anniversary of our vow renewal.  Much to our delight, Café Renaissance in Vienna (Virginia) was open and they had full power.  Thanks to my Annandale High School friends who presented us with a very generous gift certificate, Elliott and I enjoyed a delicious multi-course meal.  We started with a traditional favorite, escargots, but this time, the presentation was new:  the escargots were served out of the shell, in herbed garlic butter, along with shiitake mushrooms.  Then we shared a beautiful salad that included an avocado half stuffed with lobster.  Elliott chose rack of lamb for his main course while I opted for grilled salmon with sauce Béarnaise.   We couldn’t skip dessert, but we wanted something light.  The lemoncello cake with a raspberry sauce fit the bill perfectly.  

Saturday night, we camped out at home, setting up a bed on the lower level of the house where the temperature remained quite pleasant.  But with the forecast for hot weather again and still no power, Elliott agreed to go over to Lifetime with me after breakfast on Sunday morning.  I had to cut my workout short due to a queasy feeling, most likely due to the not-quite refrigerated smoked salmon I gobbled down shortly before we left the house.  At least we were able to shower and to recharge our phones and Kindles at the club.  Early in the afternoon, we went in search of lunch.  Elliott decided that he was in the mood for a high-carb, high-fat lunch at Einstein Bagels.  In the same shopping center, I found a Vietnamese restaurant where I ordered a light and tasty vegetable and shrimp salad.  We joined up again at the nail spa for side-by-side pedicures.  By the time we finished up there, it was after 3 p.m. and we decided to venture back to the house. 

When we got home, the temperature on the upper level was hovering in the low 80s and I quickly rushed downstairs.  Less than an hour later, we heard a click, a buzz, and a hum.  The power was back on, less than 48 hours after it initially went out.  We’re comfortable now, and even more important, we’re back in contact with the world.  And we’ve both learned a new weather word, derecho.