Damaging Winds

I was in one of the most interesting and freakiest storms I’ve ever seen today. Basically, one minute I look up from my desk and it is sunny and warm outside, about 15 minutes later I look out again…only this time my eyes are witness to an entirely different image. Black, fast moving clouds had encompassed the western sky and I did what any normal, sane human being would do…I went outside to investigate.

I stood on the 2^nd balcony of a 3 story tall office building. Not a very tall building by any means but it gave me enough of a view to watch at the storm swirled its way towards my place of work. The wind picked up steadily as the dark clouds got closer and closer. At one point, I decided that it wasn’t going to be very much fun if I stayed where I was and I sought shelter. On my way down to the basement of the facility, I looked outside to see just how bad it had really gotten. In a matter of minutes, trees where being bent over, their tops almost hitting the ground, as the rain came in sheet from the sky. The wind was so bad that it was actually blowing the wind vertically….which pushed the water through the cracks in the doors. I went to the basement to wait out the rest of the storm.

Roughly 4 minutes later everything had passed us. It was nice and sunny, but those are not good words to describe what those 4 minutes of wind and rain did to the city of Omaha. Branches were everywhere, leaves were everywhere, mulch was everywhere, as well as dirt. Streets were flooded, buildings were damaged, cars as well. I guess downtown Omaha got hit horribly. There was an Art Festival taking place in its streets today. Live music, expensive art was on display. I hope no one down there got hurt, but I’m sure that much of the artwork was damaged, which is a huge shame. I really hope that the damage wasn’t too bad; I haven’t had time to look up anything yet. I will do that when Im done with this blog.

I left work around 5:05PM and headed down to my other job, Best Buy. Apparently, the storm had picked up momentum as it progressed through the city. Therefore, the more east the storm went…the worse it got. My Best Buy store was torn apart. When I got there the power was out and the Operations department was flooded. What that means to non-retail people is that all of the registers where wet. 40 containers lay in the area; picking up all of water that was spewing from the roof…it seriously looked just like a waterfall. Needless to say, we remained closed for the rest of the day. The power never did come back on…and when I left we where no closer to opening our doors then when I arrived. I hope we get everything up and running by tomorrow…I really don’t want to lose all those hours.

Today was quite the adventure, let me tell you. I have never seen a storm do so much damage in such a little amount of time.

-Tony