Katrina's California Cousin

It all began about at 5 am yesterday morning when I heard the wind blowing so ridiculously hard that I thought the roof was going to blow off. It was crazy windy and rainy so I told Andrew that I wanted to keep the dogs in the house because something bad was bound to happen. Boy was I right. I got to work and we didn't have any power in our building at all and the ASSHOLE CEO made us go over to the main court house to wait and see what PG&E can do. Now the main court house is on the same block as us but it was THAT BAD outside. By the time we got there every single one of us had sopping wet feet, clothes, and hair. The entire sidewalk in front of the courthouse was a lake, I kid you not. My boss was sooo pissed off, especially since I think she was offically the wettest out of all of us. And when I say wet, I mean we all looked like we had just taken a shower with our clothes on. Finally we got word from PG&E that since practially the whole town of Woodland was without power they weren't going to be able to make us any promises so they let us go home!!! Woohoo!

Getting home was an obstacle in and of itself. There was SO many trees in the streets and toters and Christmas trees were everywhere. They were in the middle of the roads, in the middle of intersections, everywhere. Plus all the drains in town were backed up so the city streets were flooded because it literally hit us in flash-flood fashion. When I got home there was like 12 tree limbs laying on my street and I could see shingles literally flying off of my neighbor's roof. Today they are down to just plywood in some spots. My roof was ok but there was a Christmas tree in my driveway and one of the trees in the back yard had snapped in half (thank god I didn't put the dogs out!). About a half hour after I got home our clothes line which was bolted to a cement wall fell down and the shelter we had made for the dogs was literally being picked up by the roof and dragged around. I called my mom who commutes to work and she said that the electrical wires were arching over the highway on her way to work and twice traffic was stopped because telephone poles just snapped in half and laid across the highway.

3/4 of the town lost power and mine kept going in and out so I finally just laid down and took a nap. When I got up the worst of it was over and the street sweepers were out trying to get all the trees up out of the streets. I can't tell you how many fences and trees I saw broken. It was crazy! Later that night Andrew and I went out to dinner because we were out of groceries and there was no way in hell I was going to attempt the grocery store in that mess. Apparently everyone in Woodland had the same idea because every single restaurant in town was packed!! I'm sure it was because nobody had electricity. The news said it was the worst storm we've had in 12 years with wind up to 65 miles an hour at times. WOW! For us California's that is some seriously crazy weather!