Hurricane Ike

When we lived in Kansas City, we sometimes felt the rainy effects of hurricanes that swung up from the gulf, but we never really felt the winds from a hurricane before Sunday.
I do believe they were still categorizing Ike as a hurricane when the winds and rain started to swirl up to our part of the Ozarks Saturday night. Before dawn on Sunday morning, the winds were over 50 mph and of course, we lost power for a time. As I laid in bed listening to the winds literally howl, I also listened for the train roar that are associated with tornadoes, as the sirens were blowing the night before when we were in town.
The wind was so fierce at times, I almost woke Dale for a trip to the new basement in the writer's studio. But, knowing the door isn't secure yet and windows are not in, I wasn't sure how much protection it could even provide.
When the sun finally came up, I ventured out to make sure the power outage originated someplace other than our lines. Sade, our pit bull, who is wary of anything or anyone new, hunched down and barked for a time at the large limb in our driveway. Thankfully, the limb missed our lines and power was restored throughout our area by noon.
Ike suddenly turned to the East, sparing us from most of the rain. Unlike the forecasts we had heard just hours before of 100 percent chance of rain on Sunday, we had a mixture of more sun than clouds and a much cooler air than the day before.
It makes me wonder, though, when and where the next storm will hit. Given the frequency and violence of today's weather, it makes me glad that we're just a few weeks away now from having some finished shelter from the storms.