LR was dreaming about IMing with a stranger about a topic she can no longer remember, when a sound that didn’t belong to a dream about IM snaked into the dream and distracted her from her IM conversation. Gradually it dawned on her that it was the sound of sirens, and, opening her eyes just a slit, she glanced at the clock and discerned that it seemed to be 3:30 in the morning. (She’s blind as a bat without contacts or glasses, so it really could have said anything.) Like any normal person awakened at 3:30 AM, she rolled over, burrowed her head into the feather pillow and pulled the comforter up over her head to block out the annoying sound.
Only by that time, the siren had been wailing long enough and loudly enough that LR noticed it didn’t sound right. It wasn’t a police or fire truck or ambulance siren.
Beside her in the bed, Mr. Burt stirred. “What’s that?”
“Storm siren,” LR answered, her heartbeat quickening; but for the moment she was more concerned with the fact that she’d noticed she was sweaty. “It’s hot, will you turn on the air conditioner?”
Mr. Burt got up. When he opened their bedroom door, light poured into the pitch-darkness of the bedroom with its blackout shade and heavily curtained window. Not steady light, but lightning, flashing like a strobe light. At the same moment, they noticed that wind was beating the house with force that sounded like it would take it down.
Undaunted by the storm that had picked up during the night, Mr. Burt went to turn on the air conditioning. In bed, LR heard the unit try to start, only to immediately die, taking down with it all the other electricity in the house. There was no sound at all except for the wind beating the house, and the siren.
Suddenly LR came fully awake and alert.
“Oh my God!” she threw back the covers and scrambled for my glasses. “It’s a tornado. We’ve got to take shelter!”
Running down the stairs, past the big front window, was one of the more terrifying experiences of LR’s life. It was so dark in the house, and in the street, with all the street lamps out — the whole street must have lost power — but the lightning flashed so steadily that she could see the trees whipping around, and in the living room, the silhouette of the cat’s bristled tail and arched back against the lightning-lit patio door, which was being pelted by hail. From the alley beyond sounded the big bangs of the plastic dumpsters blown about driveways, or the garage door bowing against the wind.
LR had a split-second’s thought that just two days ago Mr. Burt had watched a video on YouTube of an enormous tornado, and she’d commented that she’d never experienced one before. Well, now she had. She grabbed Dorrie and bolted for the closet beneath the stairs, shouting for Mr. Burt to get a flashlight.
They weren’t in their makeshift storm shelter for very long. The storm died down within minutes, during which they were distracted by the cat, calmed down since she could no longer see the wind and lightning, contentedly exploring the closet where she normally was not allowed to go. She was wary again a few minutes later, when the sirens had stopped and they emerged from the closet into the house which was still battered by driving rain and wind, only slightly slower than it had been.
Mr. Burt went right to the back door and shined the flashlight out on the patio to see if the grill and patio furniture and trees were okay. One chair was overturned, but other than that, everything seemed in order. Except that there were a lot of shingles lying on the patio. It was too dark, and the weather still too bad, for them to go out and see whether they were their shingles or a neighbor’s that had blown into our yard.
By this time it was about 4 AM, and LR and Mr. Burt were so awake that LR didn’t think she would ever get back to sleep. There were thoughts of what if the roof needed replacing. There were other thoughts of how hot it was in the house because the power had not come back on and the air conditioner was not running. And LR’s heart was still pounding.
Somehow, despite all that, just when LR was debating getting up three hours early, she did sleep.
When she woke at 7, soft light was coming into the bedroom, and everything was still. She asked Mr. Burt whether there had really been a tornado and if they’d really taken shelter in the under-stairs closet. He replied yes, there had been, and they had done, and if LR was still in any doubt, it was gone when they had a look outside…
The Burts’ back patio, covered with shingles. There were more strewn about the lawn and littering the street.
Some shingles were lodged in the gutters.
Damage on the back of the roof.
We were hit hardest on this side of the house.
Thankfully, the fence Mr. Burt built last spring held up against the winds, unlike our next-door neighbors’, who lost the side they don’t share with the Burts…
…or almost everyone else in the neighborhood.
That one’s kind of an eyesore. LR hopes their new one will be shorter. 
Many of the fences were taken down by trees that snapped and were thrown by the wind.
Thankfully the Burts didn’t lose any of their trees, like so many neighbors did:
Even the Burts’ roof could have been much, much worse:
Yes, that’s a chimney snapped off and lying on the garage roof of that house. LR talked to the homeowners, who said they put their kids in the dogs in the utility closet while that was happening.
But the craziest image of destruction LR saw was this:
Two pylons in the greenbelt near the Burts’ street fell and were mangled. LR doesn’t want to know how fast the winds must have been to do that.
This is the damage at Mr. Burt’s office building (not his car or office, fortunately — although his home PC got fried in the power surge):
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