Batten Down the Hatches.....

Wow, it has been a stormy day here at work. The wind and rain is horrendous. About 4 p.m. Linda and I got in the car to drive around the property to check on the buildings and property and discovered our flag pole out front had come down. As we came down the side of one of our buildings, this tree toppled over right in front of our car. It was so surreal.....like in slow motion. Saw it snap off and then topple over in front of us. It was like watching a movie....didn't really seem like it was happening to us. Little scary too.....if we had been a few seconds quicker coming down that row, it would have come over right on our car. Yikes !!!

This is a retention pond that funnels two culverts of water out through a spillway that is in that right rear corner. This morning it was pretty much dry. I had gone over to the spillway late yesterday and checked to make sure it wasn't clogged up with leaves and twigs. This picture is from around 4 p.m.....two ducks have found their "happy place" and the water is almost over the whole spillway. It just can't take the water out quick enough.

The wind is just howling....sustained winds are 25-35 m.p.h. and the gusts are 65 m.p.h. When you look at the surface of the pond, it looks like one of those time lapse cameras with the wind pushing the rain across the water's surface. Really weird....The doors on the ends of the two buildings, with inside units, keep blowing open. We heard a loud bang and when I looked out, from the office, I saw that the concrete stepping stone I had placed in front of one of these doors had been thrown about 6 feet away.....flung when the door came flying open. I grabbed another patio stone and hopefully two stones will keep the door shut. We had to keep the front door locked today and only unlock it as a customer got to the door due to the wind. As soon as the front door would open, the wind would open the back door and blow everything off the counter (and pictures off the wall). A lady came in to pay her bill and before I could get her in the front door and it locked behind her it had snatched her umbrella out of her hand and blew it out the back door. I found it in the back yard....one spine busted. Another time when two people came in to purchase boxes, when the door opened, the wind must have went above the ceiling cause two of the covers on the ceiling fluorescent light fixtures came open. One crashed on the floor and the other was swinging from the ceiling. Whew !! Wild, wild, wet day........I was soaked to the skin most of the day ! More rain tomorrow...hopefully the winds will die down.