Storms, Storms, Storms

We, like a lot of other midwesterner folks of late - Iowa, Indiana, and Ohio - have been battered with some pretty severe storms of late. We had some doozies Friday evening, Saturday evening, and then again, Monday evening of this week. The above pic is of when I was returning home from work on Monday evening. As many of you know, I've been quite busy with work so I was getting back late on Monday, around 7:45 p.m. and as I got further south on I-75 nearing Toledo the darker and more ominous the sky got. I was actually getting frightened with the skies I was seeing. The above picture does not do it justice as the dark clouds stretched west to east as far as I could see and they were the type that looked as if a tornado would pop out down of them at any moment. I was about 10 minutes away from home when I took the above pic. The full verocity of this storm struck about 5 minutes later as I was stopped for a train at a railroad crossing wondering where I would go should one of the trees on the south side of the road that were showering me with limbs should fall toward me in my car. Then, the skies opened up and the rain let loose. I could barely make my way toward home the visibility was so poor.

I actually didn't make it home as our station had already been dispatched to several calls so, I headed to the station to assist with what I could (I'm technically on light-duty there). We ended up responding to 17 incidents for the remainder of the evening and I didn't get home till about 11:45 p.m. Long day considering I had left the house at 7:00 a.m. Traveling around southeast Michigan in the past week, I've seen a lot of damage and a lot of trees and limbs down. They had 87,000 people out of power in Southeast Michigan for several over 72 hours. I'm SO thankful I do not work in claims any longer! Although, it is job security for those folks that are.