The other day, I’m sitting in my recliner enjoying a lovely Michigan early summer afternoon. Ahhhhhhh.
Then my phone starts clamoring for my attention.
Severe thunderstorm warning – set to start in approximately 30 minutes.
I look at the precipitation tracker on my weather app, and sure as shit, there is a huge storm system coming through – but we appear to be on the very Southern edge; so I figure maybe some heavy rain with lightning and thunder – a Michigan thunder storm – my favorite!
Thiry minutes later; all hell breaks loose.
I’m now sitting in my recliner watching the trees behind and next to our house swaying like crazy. The sky is opening up and we’re getting rain of Biblical proportions, and then the tree limbs start sailing through the sky and onto our roof.
Like, we’re getting tree spears flung at us, and each impact shakes the whole house!
Holy fuck!
The tallest tree is swaying so far that I’m just hoping those roots will hold (they did); but that tree lost lots of big (really big) branches and they all seemed to be aimed at our roof.
Now, I have never been that worried about the trees around our house. I mean the trees and the house have been coexisting for many years without any major problem that I knew of; so I haven’t been worried. My (much smarter) husband has been worried.
Turns out he was right.
Got a repair guy to come out and look and give us an estimate. (Thank you Yaeger Roofing for coming out on a Saturday before we get more rain). He found 3 holes in our roof – all in our kitchen, which he tarped and caulked over until we get it fixed. And he gave us (what I think is) a very reasonable estimate for repair.
So I have new found respect for Michigan storms and the damage they can cause. Listen to the rhythm of the falling rain, telling me just what a fool I’ve been, indeed!
Thoughts from a Fat Old Lady 
Your storms made the news as we were enveloped in June gloom & fumes from the food warehouse fire —MILLIONS of pounds of food—in East L.A.
Friends of mine groused about the cost of taking down a pair of huge dead trees on their lawn. Came the wind & 2 neighbors lost their roofs when trees fell through them. You were lucky. Hope the rest of your summer is sunshine and picnics.
LikeLike
Yeah, we had one tree taken down and the township took down two of our front trees (for storm drain); the offending trees in this case are in the “woods” and technically on our neighbor’s property – but it’s pretty much unmanaged growth there, and the tree is very healthy (all the branches that got us had lots of green leaves on them!). I always thought if we had a tree / roof issue it would be a tree coming down on us, so in a way we were lucky! At least the roof can be repaired and doesn’t need to be replaced. Hope you get some blue skies soon too!
LikeLike