The Night of the Tree- by Michelle

11:00pm, Monday night. We have just gone to bed and are finally trying to sleep. We had been watching the heat lightning out the window, and were speculating about when the rain would actually start. Lightning without thunder or rain is a very weird thing.

11:15pm- CRASH BOOM.... shake shake shake... we are awakened to what looks like an explosion outside the window and a massive shaking of the house. My first thought is, "this is a tornado, the windows are being sucked out and we are next!" but when I saw the fire, my next thought was that the air conditioner had been struck by lightning and was now on fire. We shook in our bed until the fire was gone and then Bryan got up to investigate. I was still shaking in the bed. Terrified actually. Still not knowing what had happened, Bryan was even a little nervous to touch anything, but when he made it to the kitchen window the words were "HOLY COW" and "NO WAY!". As you can see by the pictures, the big tree outside our window was struck by lightning and fell across our power lines, ripping them all out of the house and off the pole they were connected to. The next 45 minutes was a blur of activity- Get the neighbors! Let's go down, we gotta see this! Move your car into the garage! Hurry! Get back in the house, it's about to pour! UH OH- that power line must still be live! Stay away! Wake up Marianne! Call the power company! Pose for a picture boys! . That picture is actually on Amber's camera, so it will have to come at a later date.

12:00am- The firemen finally show up. They are stunned that we still have power. Can't possibly figure out how our lines are all over the place, but we still have power to run our air conditioners, for which we were very very thankful, seeing as we reached a heat index of 114 yesterday. We asked when the power company would come take care of it, and the fireman said there were multiple electrical fires tonight from the lightning, so we are below them on the list, but in his words, "This is a freaky weird thing, they'll come as soon as they can" . He told us we were incredibly lucky and we should all go play the lotto, b/c there is no reason why we should have power. As the firemen left they told us to make sure we called them immediately if we smelled smoke. Thanks guys, that makes me feel great.

12:00am-2:30am- We heard three more loud pops, that of course made me think that the whole mess was actually starting on fire now. At one point we got up and watched an episode of 24 because there was just no sleeping with that kind of excitement and wondering when it was all going to catch fire.