Stormy weather

It was quite a night the other day when on Wednesday (May 2), yet another violent thunderstorm struck the Dallas-Fort Worth region at nighttime. But this time, it hit real close to home --- to the house actually.
Around 7:30 p.m., boom! boom!, out went the lights for the next 11 hours. A storm of intense verocity arose from the west, swept across the Metroplex around 45 mph and carried strong straight line winds of close to 100 mph - hurricane-force winds that seldom happen in a land-locked region.
At our Plano home, we could hear the rain, but never felt anything shake from such strong winds. It was the enveloping darkness and quiet that was disconcerting until around 6 a.m. the next morning when the power, which was out for more than 300,000 customers in the DFW area, resumed.
After finally obtaining a couple hours of sleep, I emerged after noon to get the newspaper and mail. I noticed some small branches and leaves in the yard and thought nothing of it. It wasn't until I took a couple more steps and saw our 30-foot tree sliced in half - as if Paul Bunyan had taken his giant ax and hit it flush at the base.
It had fallen over, taking almost 2/3rds of it with the collapse. Luckily, it really didn't hit our house all that much, nor did it touch the nieghbor's home.
But, as I discovered, we weren't alone. With winds reported in excess of 85 mph, a majority of the homes on our side of the block had similar happenings. Huge fallen tree trunks on the ground, or in one case, still a couple of stories in the other branches - just waiting to crash to earth.
Around the corner, fences were down and one house had four trees snapped, falling on a parked car.
The oddity was to see few trees across the street affected. On our side, it was like someone had that Bunyan ax and just kept swinging. In most cases, one swing did the trick.
Of course, this will all cost out of pocket since nothing is covered by anyone's homeowners insurance policy. Damn!
Lesson: Always respect Mother Nature because she ALWAYS has the last word.