Well, we survived with minimal damage. On Friday morning we got our house ready for the storm and then headed to my parent's house. We set up their media room (which has no exterior walls and no windows) with mattresses and rode out the storm in there. We actually were having fun and enjoying ourselves (even when we lost power at around 10:00 p.m.). Then the big winds hit and it got pretty scary. We were having around 70 mph gusts from 2:30 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. You could feel the house shaking. The wind was howling and sounded like it was going to pick the roof right off the house. Then things started hitting the windows. I was pretty scared. Come to find out later, it was the outdoor ceiling fan blades that were ripped off and were hitting the windows.
My mom and dad's house got water back around 1:00 p.m. Sat. afternoon and then power back around 2:00 p.m. So, we are in great shape compared to everyone else. Mindy and Dwayne got their power back last night and they were able to go home. Unfortunately, our house is still without power. Thankfully, we have my parent's house to stay at. We drove through our neighborhood today and everyone was sitting in their garages or in their driveways trying to stay cool.
As far as damages go, our house has some roof damage and one of our trees in our front yard is leaning. My parent's house had some water damage because some of the west windows weren't installed properly (when the storm came through and the winds were coming from the west it was pushing water into the house through the windows and under the doors). They also have some trees down. We got out and drove around a bit and there are a lot of trees down, a lot of fences down and store signs ripped right out of the ground. There are even some places where brick walls were totally demolished. I really didn't expect it to get as bad as it did out here. We live in northwest houston and were on the "clean" side of the storm. I cannot even imagine what it is like for the people who live in south houston and along the coast.
Here are some pictures of our house and around our neighborhood:
Shingles off and roof rippling
Tree leaning in our yard
Sign for shopping center down at entrance to our neighborhood
Fences down
Street light hanging
We are also in the process of building a new house and it got started just a few weeks ago. They were supposed to put the roof on on Friday, but obviously that didn't get done. The door frame was ripped out and the wind blew some of the styrofoam boards off.
So we feel very lucky and blessed to have a place to stay at with power and air-conditioning and to have come out with very minimal damage.
