Think it can’t happen to you? Ha! I live in Ohio and on Sunday, September 14 at about 1 p.m. an ill wind started to blow in from the southwest. I was pulling weeds in my garden when the angry, dark and low-lying ominous clouds began to pass quickly overhead. Straightening, I watched as the 100-plus year old maple trees in my front yard began to sway crazily, dropping debris from their branches that began to blow mightily back into the nooks and crannies I had just cleaned out. I turned my attention to battening down the patio furniture, not that my feeble efforts turned out to do much good in the face of Mother Nature.

Within an hour the wind gusts were approaching 75 miles per hour – 75 miles per hour! Never in the history of the area’s weather keeping have we had winds like that! I have certainly never seen weather like that – dark, fast moving clouds with no rain. It became no longer possible to stand outside without being hit by sharp-pointed flying debris that stung on contact and hit your eyes indiscriminately. Going inside, I said to Bob (my husband) that it looked like this was going to go on for awhile, remembering the weather report I had read the day before that said we’d have “wind” from 2 or so in the afternoon ‘til 8 p.m. “Let’s go to Costco,” I said. “I don’t think we’ll be able to do much else outside today…”

Read the whole thing here. (It's long but I feel better just getting it off my chest.)