Where the Weather Can Kill You, or At Least Dent Your House

Below are some pictures John took yesterday (23 July) evening. We had a huge storm, #56, I think, since I moved here. We were mostly looking out the front of the house, watching our plants get battered around and the trees blown horizontal. And a garbage can flew by. I've never seen such wind and rain at the same time as there are during some of these storms. It's like a hurricane. We had hail, too.

So we totally missed the runaway trampolines.



You're looking at a shot across our backyard and slightly to the right. The trampoline flew across four yards, leaving a trail of rusty springs, knocked over the swingset, and left dents in the house on the right. I'm disappointed at how small Blogspot makes the pictures, so I'm glad I circled the dents in the next picture.



The more visible dent goes right to the wood.

When John took the pictures, we thought the trampoline that caused the damaged belonged to the family in the house. However, you can see their trampoline in this picture.



It's off to the side of the picture, on the other side of the fence. We were trying to show where the trampoline was before the storm.



I told John he should have gone outside to get some better shots. That's what everybody was doing when the storm ended, just a few minutes later. People from at least five households squished over to gawk at the damage, and some had their cameras. It was great fun; apparently this is what passes for entertainment in these parts.

We didn't get to talk to the owner of either the house or the responsible trampoline, though. The trampoline's owners are out of town ("Hey, guess what?"), and the family in the damaged house was at church. The swingset was righted last night, without John's help, although I volunteered him, and the offending trampoline was gone as of this afternoon. I don't know where it went. I'm still interested to see how they're going to get the other trampoline back over the fence, assuming it's still usable.