So this happened today

It’s hot here in Kansas. Really hot, with heat index values over 100 F most days. That in turn can lead to some pretty terrific thunderstorms with a whole lot of rain. We’ve had so much rain this summer that we haven’t bothered to have our sprinklers blown out. Why pay to do that when we’re getting enough rain that everything is growing like crazy (and in fact, it’s been hard to get out to weed because the ground is so wet)?

Anyway, the forecast today was for sunny, hot and humid, but rain wasn’t in the picture until later tonight. Surprise! We had what sure seemed like a microburst on our street—nearly straight line winds and torrential rain but the weather radar barely showed anything.

As it was raining and thundering, I walked to the kitchen to start working on lunch when BOOM! A pretty good sized branch landed on top of our pergola and startled the snot out of me. Then five minutes later, the sun was shining again as if the storm had never happened.

So I opened the patio door and noticed a man standing just inside our backyard. Well it was our neighbor from across the street, and he too had seen the branch fall. Like me, he thought it was a pretty good sized branch but he’d thought it fell on our house.

And 30 minutes after all that, Kent was able to get on the ladder, crawl onto the pergola (thankfully it's very sturdy) and tug and shove the thing until it gently fell over the edge and landed on our patio. We’ll have to get it all cut up and bagged tomorrow so that it can get put out with the rest of the yard trash on Monday.