Well Cr@p

Thankfully my daughter and her husband are safe at home. I kid you not, the whole of northwest Indiana and parts of Illinois were ground zero for a HUGE derecho on Tuesday August 11. It was literally like a straight-line land hurricane that roared in with winds in the 100 mph range, and it spun up a few tornados to boot. My daughter was at work in Gary, Indiana when this terror ripped through. Even though her work is a strong building, there was a real fear the roof would rip off, and she sheltered in the bathroom. The power flickered like crazy and went off, so everyone began the arduous journey of trying to navigate the way home through a tangle of huge downed trees and electrical poles and wires. My daughter said it was bad, really bad. She feared for her life. That broke me. My daughter is a strong person. She doesn't say frivolous things. The normally 25 minute drive home took over two hours. Every city was dark until she reached her own community. Thankfully they never lost power.

The power company, NIPSCO said approximately 301,000 of its 500,000 electric customers were impacted by the storms, making this the largest customer outage event in the utility’s history.

Gas stations had no power. Banks were closed. Many grocery stores were closed. Entire cities were dark. People began trying to find gas for generators. When they found an open gas station, lines a mile long formed. Gas stations began running out of gas. People were needing to drive further and further away. Trees are down EVERYWHERE. Trees needed to be moved before NIPSCO could restore power. Areas were flooded. Basements were flooded with no power to run sump pumps. A whole spectrum of people's emotions surfaced. Some spoke of extreme kindness, others spoke of escalating anger. One person on social media said that if this is any indication of the apocalypse, they will never survive it, because two days was their limit.

Today, two of my friends reported that their power had been restored. Power companies from other states came to help. My daughter worked today at the company's other branch that had power.  

Heavy rains are currently flooding the Indianapolis area.

All the while this is going on, Menasha is still trying to recover from the tornado that plowed through town on July 27th.

The humidity is terrible. Wisconsin never used to be humid. We came up to the cottage in Briggsville often in the 1970's and 80's. In fact, Wisconsin used to be colder. It used to be so cold my first husband refused to move up here, which probably had something to do with him deciding to sell the cottage.

I am looking forward to dryer, cooler weather. In the meantime, I'm packing my most important stuff in  a strong bin that I can strap shut. So if a tornado blows the roof off, I might still have my stuff, seeing as how it seems we live in tornado alley now.

And all that stuff depresses me. I worry about my daughter. I worry about us. My hubby worries about his family in Europe where there is a heat wave. No wonder my blood sugar sucks. I'm trying to get past all this. I really am. I will feel so much better when the humidity clears out and the weather cools. I really do not like summer. I wish we were in a cooler location, like Sheboygan or Manitowoc, but no good job for hubby there.