I was getting ready to drive over to the Caribbean coast for a week at our condo and I realized I was falling asleep checking my email. So, I laid down on the couch in the living room which is an interior room in our solid stone house. Apparently, I slept through a small tornado or wind storm that hit a few minutes later. I heard the thunder as I was falling asleep and thought "oh, how nice". It had winds of around 60mph according to the news, lasted about 20 minutes and included a lot of rain. Today was the hottest day of the year so far, approximately 102°F and the storm produced hail (very odd here) described as a result of the hot air going aloft so fast. Lots of trees down, we lost electricity for about an hour (I woke up, my partner told me the electricity was out, I went back to sleep
) and the yard is a mess. The huge banyan tree on the neighbor's back wall has many cracked branches and apparently some fell but not into our yard. I couldn't see much with just a flashlight but I'm very happy that I had some tree guys out here a couple years ago and cut it back where it overhung my yard. Many of the plants that weren't tied fell over on the roof, the chairs I have up there flew around and one landed on a neighbor's roof. Speaking of that neighbor, apparently the wind moved the compressor of their AC a couple of feet. That's pretty amazing.
The storm was headed east which is the same direction I needed to go so I canceled driving in the dark and will clean up the yard tomorrow and then go. Watching the local news tonight there are trees down on major boulevards all over the city, many crushed cars, electricity has been restored but was out in several areas, windows blown out of some hotels and lots of smaller damage.
Leave it to me to sleep through such an event
