Sunday, September 14, 2008

and the craziest day ever award goes to...

Today.

In Louisville. Right now about 230,000 people in Louisville are without power, and it's the strangest thing to drive through a city you're only semi-familiar with when stoplights and streetlights are not working. And then when you try to turn down a street but can't because there's a massive uprooted tree in the way, it gets just a little confusing. And we're still without power right now, might I add...thank you for laptops and "borrowed" wireless signals...

I'm in Louisville, KY this weekend and through Wed. morning for some college fairs, and I came for the few days prior to stay with my best friend Amanda and her husband Adam. We went to church this morning and when we came out, it was eerily windy--particles blowing in our eyes, branches falling off of trees, garbage cans being knocked over--and then we started driving down the streets. Had no idea it was quite as bad as it was...the wind was up to 73 mph and I saw several massive trees completely uprooted, at least 3 different places where very large tree branches fell on top of cars, and countless roads blocked by giant tree limbs and entire trees.
The strangest part about it was that there was not a single drop of rain. In fact, it was partially sunny outside, but just really windy. I've never seen anything like it. I've witnessed bad thunderstorms and seen the effects of some damaging tornadoes, but this was really different...
And now it feels very Armageddon-ish. No lights in many sections of town, but random areas have power. Every restaurant that has power is crowded, and ice machines are out everywhere for those filling up coolers to rescue the food in their freezers and refrigerators. I went to the gas station tonight after the youth group event @ Southeast and tried to get gas. They're running out at the few that have power, so after waiting for the drops to slowly pour out, about 20 minutes later, I had almost 3 gallons and was at $11.40. I quit. I'll get it tomorrow.
Anyway, check out these pictures. My friends Dawn & Brian (friends of Amanda & Adam's, actually, but now friends of mine as well...) took these pictures today after we left their house in the Highlands where there was a ton of damage.



p.s. sorry for the lack of paragraphs...for some reason blogger wouldn't space my paragraphs as i typed.

4 comments:

Meghan said...

We were in Louisville this weekend too! I know exactly what you were talking about. We had branches flying at the car while driving home after church! Hope things have died down a little. We also found out that our fence in Texas is no longer with us. Our tree was uprooted and took out our fence, stupid Ike.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for your comment. I am deeply sorry for the loss of your dad. I really am.

YOu know what? Good friends of mine went to Sojourn before moving to Columbus OH to start a church. Small world, eh?

I just realized that maybe that's how you came to read my blog (through the Nyes???) and in which case just pretend I didn't have that ah-ha moment.

the Johnsons said...

hey mandy- yeah, it was interesting experiencing our first 2 hurricanes! the wind is crazy! it didn't rain here too much for ike, maybe 1.5 inches in our area. but there was flooding in places when ike was hundreds of miles away! crazy. oh, and aaron wonders if you left us a message on his phone- we know a few mandys so we weren't sure, and the phone # wasn't the one he had for you. hope you guys get power soon- so curious what louisville looks like right now! thanks for the pics :)

Anonymous said...

Well I am glad I wasn't being a jerk and forgetting you knew the Nyes..anyway, you know Aaron?