A little over a week ago we had an intense storm come through our area.  It was a Tuesday night when it hit.  Now we like storms.  Usually you will find us on the front porch watching the storm and enjoying the excitement it brings.  On this particular stormy night, Todd and I decided to take advantage of the rain to fill up our 75 gallon fish tank.  (We have an old, shallow well that has a tendency to run dry if we do not regulate our water so we use rain water as much as we can.)  So while it was raining buckets and buckets outside we were filling buckets and buckets to fill up our tank.  At one point during this process the rain went from falling vertically to horizontally.  Not only that but the sound and pressure outside changed.  Todd immediately tried to get inside and had a difficult time opening up the front door.  A few minutes later everything was back to normal rain fall.  We didn't think anything of it.  Some time later I went to the kitchen to get something and realized something was different.  You see, in  our back yard is a street lamp that illuminates our back yard.  However, when I looked out the back, kitchen window instead of being lit up it was dark.  Not only that, but there appeared to be leaves in the window.  Sure enough, our large catalpa tree had blown over in the storm.  It landed between our house and our vehicles damaging neither.  We also realized that it had snapped the light post in half, blown our garbage can into the front, side yard and severed off our water spigot giving us no water pressure in the house.  We were amazed that we never heard the tree fall or the light post split.  Todd was up til 3 am waiting for the power company to come out and remove the live wire that was laying outside our back yard.  The next morning all the neighbors showed  up to see the great tree that had fallen.  George loaned  us his chain saw to cut it up and Allen and Curtis helped us remove the debris.  The kids had a blast playing all over the downed tree and were sad to see how quickly Todd was able to remove it.  It turns out that carpenter ants had eaten away at the tree and it was hollow inside.

Here are a few pictures: