Now that's what I call severe weather!

So for the past week, our weathermen had been predicting that it would rain all day Friday and Saturday. It didn't. Not one drop. And still no one predicted the downpour we received this morning. Actually "downpour" is probably an understatement. There were 2 tornado warnings within 10 miles of our house. It started with a little thunder, and it was really dark outside, so I opened the blinds so we could enjoy it. Yes, I said enjoy it. I LOVE rain. I've only lived in places where it doesn't happen very often, so I LOVE it. When we lived in Lubbock, there were often Tornado warnings, usually in one of the many outlying cities/counties (since Lubbock was the news hub for a huge area). The weathermen reports would then take over the TV stations for the rest of the evening, yet we rarely ever saw the severe weather. So this morning when the wind was blowing like crazy and it started raining, I turned on the TV, thinking I would get lots of info. Nope. Nothing. Apparently our weathermen wouldn't interrupt the morning news shows. I took Billy into our bedroom so that I could get dressed. The rain started totally pouring down, so I opened the door and Billy and I peeked our heads out to watch it. Not more than 10 seconds later, there was a huge clap of thunder and a bright flash of light as lightning struck in our backyard! I couldn't believe it. I've never been that close to lightning before. It was incredibly bright and incredibly loud. Billy started crying, and I slammed the door shut, but my ears kept ringing for a few minutes afterward. Wow.

We got so much rain. I opened the garage door and took pictures of our street, which looked more like a swimming pool. Garbage cans were knocked over and had floated down the street. The pictures didn't come out great, but I'll post a couple anyway. The rain has all but stopped now, and most of the water is already gone. Amazing. I'm used to Lubbock, where they didn't quite understand the concept of drainage systems, so the water stayed in the streets for a long time and caused lots of problems

Here's the intersection that is totally submerged. I don't even know who those two garbage cans belong to.

This is in front of our garage. Notice how deep the water is across the street by the other garbage can! Those trash bags are literally floating in the middle of the street. The street was completely submerged. (It's trash pick-up day, that's why I have so many pictures of garbage cans!)

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