Perfect Storm

Highway to the Stormy Horizon
Oregon's Willamette Valley is home to many people for many reasons.One of the biggest ones,I think,is it's natural beauty and generally mild climate.We seldom have extremes of weather here.Our water is too cold for hurricanes for instance.Thursday of this week past surprised us all.We'd had a week of cloudy,humid weather.Wednesday evening a very brief thunderstorm came through.2 peals of thunder,2 lightning flashes and it was gone.But Thursday,now Thursday had a storm.Steve and I had taken off to a local Albertson's store to buy some meat marinade.He loves Adolph's and they are the only ones to sell it.As we left our apartment and headed toward I-5 we both noticed some ominous clouds to the southeast of us.Dark and foreboding they were.I innocently commented that I would not be surprised if the heavens dumped on us soon.:-)We arrived at the store with a jangling cell phone to herald our arrival.It was our daughter April.Our very excited daughter.Seems she had the news on and they had just announced tornado warnings for a town in the foothills east of us called Lyons!And severe thunderstorm warnings for our area.It felt more like we lived in the Midwest at this point!Though we'd seen some lightning and heard some thunder by now it was not much.We hurried into the store with the thought that it was not really going to be much of a storm.Most of them fizzle out quickly and with little damage here.Still we felt the need to get in and out as fast as possible.Flickering store lights encouraged us in this endeavor.We found what we came for and prepared to exit the store quickly.Ha.We reached the exit only to be impeded by many shoppers huddled in front of us looking out at the now drenching rains pouring forth from above.There was so much rain coming down it looked as if a dark grey fog had descended upon the parking lot.We debated.we could see our van parked in the disabled spot(Steve has a placard due to COPD and heart trouble,etc.)just a few feet in front of us.But it was pouring.So we decided to go for it.Neither of us were prepared to be soaked to the skin but we were.The parking lot was beginning to flood as overworked drains struggled to keep up with the deluge.The winds were wild and the sky was dark as night almost in some places.We drove out onto the road and watched as cars drove through now flooding streets in an attempt to get home.They had been dry only moments before.We slowed to a crawl as the rains and wind assaulted our van and the lightning and thunder tore open the skies above.We had to slow way down at various points as we could not see to drive.Our wipers did not have warp speed on them.:-)We finally made it back to our complex though it took some time.Branches and leaves littered the driveways as if a tornado had gone through.Some of the branches were as big as trees themselves!It turns out there were peak gusts of nearly 75 miles an hour here in town!We finally reached our carport and were greeted with mud and pebbles rolling down the sidewalks in small rivulets from some sloped landscaping near the stairs.We reached our apartment's safe warmth to learn we had not lost power.We were thankful.Thankful too that our cat was only slightly freaked out.Though it continued to rain and we still saw and heard thunder and lightning we bbq'd on our covered patio.We had witnessed some of the wildest weather this are has seen and lived to tell about it!God is good!And it really was a perfect storm.:-)
Blessings all~Sharon