Slammed by a Downburst!

 

 “But I am poor and needy. May the Lord think of me.”*

Normally, walking around the neighborhood in the evenings with our dog TJ is a time of refreshing and renewal: enjoying the quiet, stopping to look at attractive landscaping and flowers in bloom, chatting with neighbors…  Lately though, I have been feeling sad during our walks.

Piles of tree trunks,  logs, and branches are along the street in front of nearly every house. Many iron fences buckled under the weight of a fallen tree and some rooftops are covered with blue plastic tarps.

In some places the sidewalk is blocked completely, forcing us to take a detour. Looking skyward, many huge maples have completely bare branches. In some, tree-sized limbs have been snapped off and left dangling.

One evening a car stopped as I was inspecting the damage in a tall, stately tree.

 “What happened here?” a young woman asked.

She lived in another suburb of Detroit and had been driving through the area with her young son.

 “Was it a tornado?”

 “Not exactly.” I tried to explain what had happened, according to my limited understanding.

“Well, we lost a tree in the backyard and had damage to the fence. It was a blessing it didn’t hit the house,” she shared.  “This is really bad!”

She told me that she had been hit by a limb falling from a tree several years ago, but thankfully wasn’t seriously injured.

“I haven’t heard of any fatalities or injuries from this storm,” I replied.

After saying “good-bye,” she slowly drove away.

So, what did happen to us? On Wednesday evening, June 19^th, big drops of rain started to fall just as TJ and I got home from our walk around 8:30 or 9:00 p.m. It had been a hot, humid day with a forecast of severe weather events in scattered areas around southeastern Detroit after nightfall.

I found a flashlight and lantern as the wind picked up and the rain began to fall harder.  Al was going down to the basement to the sauna and took the flashlight with him. At that moment, the lights went out, leaving us in the dark!

He quickly came back up the stairs using the flashlight. There was a crashing sound against an outer wall of the kitchen, and I headed into the hallway with TJ, taking the lantern with me.

 First came lightning and thunder, then sparks and booms as transformers blew out. Al followed us into the hall watching the progress of the storm on the weather app on his cell phone, our only connection to the outside world.

We learned that it was a “downburst,”  a rare weather event that sometimes occurs after an intense rain creates a strong downward current of air from the storm clouds overhead. When the current hits the ground it causes powerful winds that spread out in all directions damaging trees and power lines.

Although the storm passed by quickly, we felt the effects of it for the next three days. Everyone in our community of 4 ½ square miles, with a population of over 10,000 people, was affected, but some far worse than others with damage to their homes, garages, or cars.

Here are some ways that God took care of us: there were no reported fatalities or injuries. We were extremely thankful that there wasn’t any damage to our property, except for a branch of a tree from the cemetery next door leaning out over the driveway.  Praise the Lord for His protection!

 Al and I were grateful that he wasn’t sitting in the sauna when the lights went out and had the flashlight to guide him back up the stairs. We didn’t have a way to open the automatic garage door and get the car out; however, that problem was solved the morning after the storm when friends began checking on us to see if we were okay.

Our friend, Jim Verhage came up in his car and left it for us to use for the duration of the power outage! Praise God for providing good friends to help in times of need.

Experiencing that storm and surviving it reinforced to me God’s faithfulness and His protection over us. Thank you, Lord!

 “Praise the Lord all you nations; extol him, all you peoples. For great is his love towards us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.” (Psalm 117 NIV) 

* Psalm 40:17 NIV

(Pictures from our neighborhood of Beverly Hills, CA)