I maintain the website for
Blackwater Bluegrass and the festival is this weekend. The music started at 4 p.m. yesterday afternoon so I headed out to shoot a few pictures before nightfall.
When I left, the sun was shining brightly and the temperature was in the 80's which is not good for October.
Even though the sun was shining, the air was unstable and the plants on our back deck were blowing in circles. I loaded up my equipment and headed out to the festival which is about fifteen miles west of here.
When I crossed highway 69, I looked off to the south and the sun was bright, when I looked to the west, there was an angry wall cloud that was steel gray with undertones that were as green as the torch of an arc welder. Stabs of lightening forked and I could hear thunder even with the windows rolled up on my truck.
I slowly drove toward the festival and the storm swept over me with blinding rain. I pulled to a place where I could jump out of my truck and into a ditch if I had to. But after the initial torrent, the rain slowed to a drizzle and when I got to the festival, I could see the sun and blue skies off to the north and west.
My cell rang when I'd been there a short while. Jilda called from home to say that the thunder storm blew by our house and that huge trees were blown across the road leading to our house and the power was off.
I headed home and was stopped within three hundred yards of our house by emergency vehicles. A pine tree that was at lease eighty feet tall and a good three feet in diameter was in the road. The power, phone and cable lines were in the road too.
Fortunately no one was hurt and after about an hour, the crews working with chainsaws and BobCat tractors cleared one lane of our road and I managed to get home.
There were limbs down in our yard, but we had not damage. We didn't get power or cable until today.
As a result, I was not able to do a Life 101 blog entry yesterday which was the first time in almost three years I haven't written one. I'm just glad Jilda and the critters were ok.
Have a great Saturday.