The Raging Storm- Hurricane Irma

Although Irma would not make landfall until Sunday, September 10^th, she was so large, that we started feeling the effects of her outer bands on Saturday afternoon.  Nothing crazy, just some heavy rains and gusty winds.  We ran a few errands that morning and spent the early afternoon hours making sure we were as secure as possible.  We were able to park the truck in the garage and then park my van sideways in front of the garage.  A lot of thought went into this…and we felt this was the best way to secure our vehicles.  The truck holds twice as much gas as my van, which may be needed after the storm, and we figured we may want to use the truck to haul supplies…so, if a vehicle got totaled, it should be my van.

By 4:30 on Saturday afternoon, we were locked in.  Hannah filled the fridge to the brim with waters and Gatorades (we read that the fridge stays colder the fuller it is…I believe it).  We made dinner, put the kids to bed, and Jeremy and I watched the last three episodes of The Office.  We had been watching it all summer and wanted to finish it before we lost power and internet.  Then, we went to bed…and had a wonderful night’s sleep.  In fact, we all slept in, even though the weather was getting progressively worse, but the shutters kept the house wonderfully dark.

Since we still had power, I made a big breakfast and cooked all the bacon (which I took from my friend’s fridge the day before).  Then, I don’t really remember what we did.  I think I nervously walked around the house, we turned the TV on our local news station (NBC -2 is the BEST during a hurricane.  Senior Chief Meteorologist Robert Van Winkle is my “go to” guy on hurricane days.), and just putzed around the house I guess.  We probably went outside and took a little walk…in fact, yes…we did do that. 

The weather adventurers came to check on us.  

We even had visitors in the earlier afternoon.  My mom and dad took a little walk to check in on us and give a live weather update.  It was a fun distraction.

As lunch time approached, Jeremy encouraged me to cook one more thing, so I made some pasta.  As soon as it was finished, we lost power.  I consider that a gift from God 😊  That pasta was our dinner that night.

When the power went out, things got real.  Let’s be honest, I was nervous.  How can you not be?  We now had no idea where the hurricane was going, but we also knew it didn’t matter because it was so big.  No matter what, we would see hurricane force winds.  Jeremy saw my anxiety, but was trying to keep the atmosphere light and fun so the kids wouldn’t feed off my nervousness.  He is great at that.

We decided to make up our “hunker down” corner because we knew it would get bad in about two hours.  So, we laid two large pieces of paper out on the table to make our prayer and praise wall.  We wrote scripture reminding us not to be afraid and to trust the Lord, and prayer requests for friends and family who were facing the storm in all different ways.  The kids enjoyed being part of this.  Then, we spent time praying through each scripture and each request presented.  This was such a beautiful time of prayer and growth for our family.  It set the tone for the next few hours and helped us to focus on The One True God and not ourselves.

We then made up our corner with a mattress in the corner, lots of blankets, pillows, and stuffed animals.  Around 3:30 we moved into our ‘hunker down’ corner because the winds were picking up.  This could have been the scariest part of the storm, but it was filled with more peace and trust than I could have ever expected.  I had our radio set to listen to our local meteorologist who was giving minute by minute updates of the storms path, wind, etc.  It was on very low, and very close to my ear, so no one else really heard it except me.  Nicole had her ipad charged and she had some praise music on it.  So, we spent the next hour and half singing praise and praying through the eye wall, the most intense winds and rain of the storm.  During much of the time, we were louder than the wind, and a peace came over our family and our room.

I won’t lie, it was still intense.  We kept hearing something hitting the roof and rolling from one side of the house to the other.  Your mind goes wild as to what that could be.  There were times when the wind would howl, and I would grab Jeremy’s hand.  But, everyone remained calm.  Jeremy was a physical rock our family could lean upon, and God was our fortress in whom we could hide and seek protection.  It really was a faith building activity for our family.  It was beautiful, and I am so happy we all experienced it together.

Mr. VanWinkle’s play by play of the hurricane was spot on.  We knew the eye wall was moving through and there were just a few minutes left before we were in the eye.  And we heard it.  We heard the last howl, and then it quickly calmed.  Jeremy started venturing out of the room to get where we could hear better.  We all snuck (in the dark) to the front door, where Jeremy carefully opened it and looked outside.  We could see, to the north of us the black sky where the eyewall was, and the lighter grey of the eye.  There was still a slight breeze, but we began to venture out.

We were shocked.  The roads were gone.  It was under at least a foot of water.  Our yard was flooded up past the sidewalk, and our street was flooded to about halfway up our driveway.  As the seconds turned to minutes, the wind died down even more until it was a perfect stillness.  It was calm.  No, it was dead.  There was not even the slightest breeze.  It was unreal. 

 

Family selfie in the eye

Jeremy is standing in the middle of the street.

Some sort of concrete decoration ended up in our yard.  

We weren’t the only one venturing out.  Our neighbors all came out and caught a glimpse of the rubble that was left behind the fury of the north eye wall.  We all wandered into the streets, taking pictures and checking on one another.  We had no idea how big the eye was at this point…but guessed we had about 30 minutes.  We did not leave our yard, because we knew that at any moment the winds could pick back up again, so we were safe.  But, seriously…..you can’t NOT go outside when you are in the eye of a storm….especially if you know the eye is rather large, which it was. 

We did a quick preview of our property and found that several large trees had ripped in half and fallen….but all had fallen away from our home.  Our yard was filled with debris and water, but our house was in tact. 

 

Knowing this was where all that noise was coming from gave me some peace.  It was a scary noise!

We were finally able to get eyes on what was rolling around on our roof, and it wasn’t a giant tree like I had imagined, it was two (large) branches, but they were not causing any damage.  Our roof was in tact, not a shingle lost.  My van had not been struck by any branches.  We had survived the first half of the storm with almost no damage to our property, just our trees.

So- we enjoyed the next few minutes.  We enjoyed the stillness.  We took photons.  We breathed in the moment.  It is surreal to stand in the same place that moments ago was experiencing 130-140mph winds.  Now, there was nothing.  Knowing that our home was withstanding the storm well, and that our neighbors and ourselves were safe allowed us to enjoy this reprieve. 

A bit later, the breeze began to pick up and went back to our front porch and watched the back half of the storm move in.  We were well protected from this of the storm while sitting on our porch, in fact, we could not feel the wind at all, just see it move through the trees.  Once the winds picked back up to hurricane force, we went inside and had dinner.  Remember that pasta I had cooked a few hours earlier?  Well, we had that with rotisserie chicken.  It tasted wonderful. 

As we ate, we heard on the radio that the back half of the storm was breaking up.  The winds were not as strong, and the rain bands were falling apart.  I can not adequately describe the sense of relief that came over Jeremy and I.  All of those days leading up to the storm, despite our attempts to continually lay our fears down at the throne of God, were wearing on us.  There was stress and anxiety and the last two hours was incredibly tense.  All at once, we were able to relax.  We laughed.  We ate.  We played games.  We let our guards down, at least a bit.  After dinner, we decided to sit on the front porch until dark and watch the storm. 

 

This is the highest Nathan has ever gotten in that tree ;)

Night fell and we let the kids sleep in their ‘hunker down’ spots with us.  The power was off, and the shutters were still up, so we could only crack the windows a bit.  In all honesty, I didn’t sleep well that night.  Although some anxiety had released after the eye, I was very aware that we were still in the middle of a hurricane.  The wind howled that night.  I heard it more because the window was cracked a bit and the house was quiet.  The branches on the roof rolled occasionally.  Rest did not come as easily as it had the night before.  But we were safe.  We were together.  And we were home.

The morning proved that my uneasiness that night was not without need.  Many more trees fell during the second half, even though it was not as strong.  We woke up the next morning, and our neighborhood looked drastically different.  But again…we were safe.  We were together.  And we were home. 

Now it was time to assess and to work.