Life with the Ball's: Bomb Cyclone!

We experienced our first bomb cyclone. I don't really know what that is, but we had hurricane-like winds which is not normal for a place with lots of tall pine trees. We were warned it could be bad, but I remembered the Storm of 2016 that Never Was and decided the worry was probably for nothing, so naturally I did nothing to prepare for the storm that I wasn't expecting to actually materialize. I WAS WRONG!!

It started getting windy on Tuesday evening and within minutes of noticing the wind picking up, our power went out. I gathered a few flashlights and head lamps and took the boys to Chipotle for dinner, along with Henry's BFF Jack. We were all in good spirits, eating good Mexican food, and then went back home to get our swimsuits so we could go swimming at the Y since all the activities we'd had were canceled. Obviously we were still not concerned about this storm in any way. Then my phone started ringing and it was Jack's mom. I could hear her but she couldn't hear me. After several failed attempts to communicate since our texts weren't going through, she called and said, "I can't get to your house so I guess Jack will have to sleep there." Jack and Henry were thrilled at the idea of a sleepover but I could tell Jack's mom (and my BFF) was not happy her son wasn't home so I did what any friend would do and loaded my kids up in my big old Expedition and decided I could get Jack home just fine.

I WAS WRONG!! Again. We got down to the bottom of our driveway and looked to our left to see a huge tree down across our road making it impossible for any cars on the other side of the tree to leave our neighborhood. There was only one way out of our neighborhood and luckily for us, the tree fell past our house so we could get out but no one else farther up the street could. Henry suggested we say a prayer and so we did, then turned onto our road, drove about twenty feet and came to a stop because another big tree was blocking the road. This one had snapped into a couple pieces so Parker and I were able to drag it a bit and that's when Randy and Landon showed up and helped us clear the tree away leaving just enough room for our car to get through. Hooray! We drove out of the neighborhood and came to another road block. This time it was several branches that I dragged out of the way as the wind roared around us and the towering pine trees swayed over our heads. I got back in the car and Randy and Landon joined us because no one wanted to miss out on this adventure that felt like a scene from the movie Twister. Also, if you're doing the math, we had already seen 3 trees down in about a tenth of a mile. Things were only going to get worse. And it did.

We drove along the main road to Jack's house (1.5 miles away) and came to a stop when another tree was blocking our way. This one was suspended over the road, about ten feet in the air. I thought we could fit under it but I had Randy stick his head out the window as we passed under, just to be sure. We cleared it with a few inches to spare. Little did we know that the tree was suspended in the air because it was laying across power lines. We kept driving.

A quarter mile later and not too far from Jack's house, was another huge tree laying across the road. We couldn't drive under this one so I stopped the car in the middle of the road and told Jack to jump out and I'd run him home while Randy tried to help some people whose car got stuck when they tried to drive under the tree.

By this time the night was totally black because power was out everywhere. Tree branches both big and small were strewn about across the road and we had to pick our way around and over them. It was tricky since we only had my phone flashlight to guide us. Jack thought it was a fun adventure but I was praying my heart out that a tree or giant branch wouldn't fall on us. It was actually pretty terrifying as I tried to keep my eye on the dark sky overhead so we could dodge falling debris as we tried to run down the street that was so covered with branches no car could drive down it.

I got Jack home to be greeted by his very relieved parents who had their neighbors over because a huge tree with a five foot diameter had crashed through their roof. Things were getting dangerous fast! I ran back towards the downed tree and my family so we could head back home. This time when we approached the tree we had driven under before, we could tell it had dropped several feet and could see the sagging power lines ready to topple at any moment. Luckily there was another way to get back to our house so we tried plan B. Plan B didn't work for long because another huge tree (think giant Redwood tree) had crashed down across the road in a tangle of smaller trees and power lines. Plan C was not terrible, just slow going as we swerved to avoid branches everywhere. At this point I closed the giant sun roof in my car so if a tree fell on us, we wouldn't be covered in glass. We came across another scene of destruction but this tree fell leaving a gap just wide enough for us to get around if we drove up onto the sidewalk. Luckily I wasn't in my minivan so this was no problem. It took us 45 minutes but we finally made it home to our house. We set up beds in the living room downstairs because the upstairs didn't feel safe since our house is surrounded by towering trees swaying precariously in the wind. We went to bed, trying to not think about the loud crashing and snapping sounds as trees fell and branches snapped.

We woke up to mostly sunny skies and not even a breeze. The destruction was unreal. I jumped on my eBike that has massive tires and rode around all the same roads we'd taken the night before. Most roads were completely closed with warning signs and cones blocking them off. The only cars on the roads were firetrucks, police, and power line trucks, and then me on my eBike. I felt like I was in a scene from a movie. So many people were outside walking around, filming the damage and checking on their neighbors. We were lucky. Our yard was a mess and about five huge trees fell in our forest, completely blocking the trail we use to get to the high school and park. Two of our huge pine trees on our property line fell on our neighbors garage but luckily didn't do much damage. Our driveway was blocked by two fallen trees that crushed our neighborhood mailbox (not a good time of year to not have a mailbox). About five houses in our ward had trees fall on them, breaking through roofs and shattering windows. With the amount of trees in our area, this is a miracle the damage wasn't worse. Only two people died in this storm and one of them was an elderly woman in our stake who was crushed by a tree that fell on her.

This has become the longest post ever so I'll wrap it up by saying how thankful we were that the storm mostly just made a big mess. We didn't have electricity for six days, and no cell service for five days. On day two of the storm, I finally drove into Redmond, the next town over, until I could get service on my phone and then it just blew up with texts from people across the stake. It took awhile for everyone to get accounted for and it was a relief to hear that the worst of the storm was literally our ward, especially the 1-mile radius of our house. All the gas stations near us didn't have power so getting gas was a huge ordeal. Costco was the only place open for miles so the lines of traffic to get there so people could fill their gas cans to run their generators was nuts. Our generator runs on propane though so Randy got up early each morning to get us more propane as it got delivered to Home Depot first thing, then drove to his office to see if power/phones were working so he could treat patients. Our office was closed for three days before power was restored there. I was at the grocery store on day 8 and it still didn't have power. The generators ran just enough light to see but some people were shopping with their phone lights on. While I was shopping the power kicked on and everyone in the store cheered. It was awesome!

Bomb cyclones are no joke! The pictures of the destruction don't do it justice. Oh, and one crazy thing was how good it smelled. All those fresh pine branches strewn everywhere smelled better than any Christmas tree farm (or the Arlington Ward wreath making party). It was weird to witness such destruction when everything smelled so good! It would be like watching your house burn down with the delicious aroma of fresh cinnamon rolls in the oven. But we survived and the kids even got back to school for one day before Thanksgiving vacation began. People worked hard and fast to clean stuff up but the damage is everywhere and there are still so many trees on the sides of the road.