And Now For The Rest of The Story!

Less Than 24 hrs Before the Wedding!

For as many years as I can remember Amanda has loved Heston Farm

It was her dream to get married there someday.

She'd had friends get married there even in rain storms

and it was fine because even tough it is outside everything is under cover!

The weather was unusually hot this week

and Friday was really hot and they were calling for

a thunderstorm.

We started early putting up decorations

and if you have been reading this blog for the last week we had made most of them

in this last year.

Things were really starting to look nice

but it was time to go home and get ready for the Rehearsal Dinner

Than after the dinner that was at the other end of the property we would all

go back up to the pavilion to finish up what we could before calling it a night!

Remember my last post we talked about the beautiful weather we were having for the Rehearsal Dinner?

Everyone dressed for a luau!

Well things changed real quick that night!

We heard the first clap of thunder and a few of us thought we better run back up there and put

a few things a little more undercover...

Have you ever heard of a storm called a

DERECHO

http://earthsky.org/earth/videos-and-images-violent-us-storm-of-june-29-2012

This link will tell you a little more about it..

It is a lot like a tornado but instead of being vertical it comes in horizontal!

It went from being sunny and beautiful

to being

Yellow and Green/Gray

skies in just minutes.

The wind started picking up

they said upwards of 70+ mile an hour winds..

We were grabbing decorations and stuff and literally throwing them in the kitchen

which was the only completely covered area.

Those beautifully decorated doors at one point I saw two men trying

hold them up. At that time I looked up and all those beautiful trees were just

twisting off and exploding right in front of us.

At That Point...

I screamed for everyone to drop everything and run to the kitchen...

Those doors dropped to the floor and we ran.

The sky was black at that moment and it was only 8:00

and the roar was so loud as it passed over us.

I had never seen or heard anything like it!

All the power was out and we were tripping over things in the kitchen,

trying to get around with our lights on our cell phones.

We came out of the kitchen...

only to see all the destruction this had left in it's path.

I grabbed Amanda in my arms 

both of us in shock at this point to what had just happened...

We just stood and cried!

Looking around to see if anyone was hurt and wondering how everyone was that we had just

left at the other end of the property. Because they had no real cover down there. Just an open pavilion.

It seemed forever before anyone came up from down there.

Everyone was OK...

except for Amber who fell and really scrapped up her leg.

We waited for power to come back on, and made phone calls to see if we could get any help down there.

Tried to check out the property..

for any damage...

The cabinet that was to have all those mason jars had blown down and was full of water.

There were Hydrangea's all over the place.

Chairs set up for the service were blown here and there.

Limbs and leaves scattered the beautifully manicured property.

Benches and chairs around the fire pit were all down.

It seemed that the storm came right up the rivers path!

The doors they stood in front of just a couple of hours earlier at the Rehersal were a mess...

These doors were held up with rebar driven in the ground and bolted to the back of the doors..

Chairs blown and leaves everywhere...

furniture around the fire pit

This tree was right behind our pavilion

just twisted and wripped apart.

That evening the sound of chain saws rang out into the we hours of the night.

The fire alarms kept ringing.

Trees on homes and roads and in the river all around us.

This tree behind us looked liked it had been pealed like a banana..

Up rooted trees just laid in the river and almost 4 weeks later it is still there.

For a week there was no power on that hill and as you can see power was off in a huge area of the East...

But it was hit and miss... we live less than a mile from where the wedding took place and we never lost power. But that whole hill was without for a week.

West Virginia had almost 500 electrical poles down...

and twisted towers...

stuff like this doesn't get fixed overnight! 

To Be Continued...

Lynn