Scary Storm

It all started on Saturday night around 8:30. The wind started picking up ferociously and by 9:00, I started to get nervous. Then it happened, the lights went out at 9:15 and the wind was whipping my trees and plants around. All of a sudden the wind, now blowing up to 70mph, (according to the newspaper) picked up my umbrella, that was sitting inside of my glass table, and threw it slamming it into the ground. My table was shattered into diamond-sized pieces all over my lawn. Now I was really starting to get scared. Fire trucks and sirens were going off all around me. I quickly thought in the dark, I'm getting my stuff ready to hit the road. I felt through the dark and packed up my computer, all my work-related stuff, threw some clothes into a bag and put it all in my car so that I only had to load up the dogs and get outta here. Within 30 minutes the sirens seemed like they were just next door they were so loud and then the embers started flying in the air. Now, as most of you know, I live next to an old, dried up house that could go up in smoke at any moment. I got the hose out and started spraying the garage and the fence. Still almost crapping my pants of what I was going to do, I nestled onto my couch with my dogs to watch the storm. Then I realized, how do my neighbors have power and I don't? They live right across the street. I walk outside and look down one side and down the other. My whole side didn't have power and the other side did. More sirens. I didn't go to bed until 11:30 Saturday night and when I awoke, still no power. Needless to say, I really need to get my 72-hour kit ready for "emergencies" like this. The power didn't come back on until 1:23 early Monday morning. I was without power for 28 hours and 8 minutes. First of all, this doesn't really ever happen in Boise, but it really made me think about being prepared.