Last night was a new experience for all of us. In my 31 years of life I have never experienced a storm quite like I did last night. I lived 21 years of my life in Southern California and no one can dispute that Southern California has the best weather in the United States and some of the best weather in the world. This means that Southern Californians live a very sheltered life from Mother Nature. I do want to say that I do enjoy the seasons we get here in San Antonio and I love the average storm that blows through.
Last night we were expecting a big rain storm. We are in such a drought here in Texas that the expected 1 - 2 inches of rain was an answer to many prayers. Other than expecting a lot of rain we really didn't think much of the expected overnight storm. My mom and I went to bed at about 11:15 pm and when I got to bed I saw there was a weather alert on my phone. I opened it and lo and behold we had a tornado warning through 5 am!!! I grew up in earthquake country, my whole family, including my oldest 3 kids, know how to "duck & cover" and to keep your school desk from walking away from you but not one of us had a clue as to what we should do if a tornado did hit. I quickly turned on the news and they had interrupted The Tonight Show and were stressing that this storm had picked up steam, that the tornado warning was a real threat along with "deadly" golf ball size hail and "deadly" lightning. In the 2 1/2 years we have lived here we have never had a tornado warning and we had never heard hail and lightning described as deadly. At 11:45 pm I told my mom what was going on so we moved our outdoor plants and furniture inside, at this point there was no storm. I took the advice of the weather service and decided to camp out for the night so I could get any important information on the tornadoes and if I needed to, wake everyone up upstairs and bring them downstairs and take cover.
At 12:40 am I heard the first clap of thunder. I stayed in front of the TV watching the updates. From 12:45 am to 4:30 am it was constant thunder and lightning... there was no break.
Downtown photo of the storm last night taken by NBC News, San Antonio.
Photo taken by a Facebook friend of the storm last night.
There were a couple times when the thunder sounded super weird and I kept debating with myself if it sounded like a train and I needed to get everyone downstairs or if it was just super close thunder. During all of this buckets of water were falling from the sky. The video below is not from last night but an example of how much water can fall from the sky here all at once. The rain was actually coming harder than what is shown in this video.
At about 3am I was starting to get really tired and was waiting for the all clear from the weather service to head to bed and sleep sound when I see a huge bolt of lightning shoot across the sky and hit the power poll in our backyard. The whole backyard and house lit up brighter than a sunny day and I hear a huge explosion!!! Then everything goes dark and then two more loud pops and explosions of light. Then an orange glow in our backyard. I fumble for my phone so I can see to run upstairs to make sure everyone was awake and okay. I run into the back bedroom and look out the window and our power poll in the back yard was on fire!!! Thankfully it was raining so hard that the fire was out within 2 minutes or so. However everyone was awake, of course, and all our adrenaline was pumping. Everyone fumbled around for their cell phones or flashlights and tried to calm down. About 10 minutes after the lightning strike we saw a firetruck in the school parking lot behind our house looking with their spotlight at the neighborhood and our house. Brent and I went out front and met them and told them that the strike hit behind our house and so they went in the backyard and made sure nothing was on fire.
Everyone was back in bed and settling down by 4am. I think I finally fell asleep when Brent left for work at 4:30 am. The annoying part was that twice between 4am and 6:20 am the power poll behind our house exploded again giving everyone a fright. I was up with the kids at 6:50 am... in the dark, getting them ready for school. All the power in our area was out so all 4 kids started their day at school in the dark. Thankfully our power was back on by 9:15 am. We had our electric company in our backyard by 8:30 am and they were super quick getting everything up and running. We are very lucky that lightning struck the poll and not our house. We are very lucky that none of our electronics were destroyed.
Power poll in our backyard that was struck by lightning.
We have a very small backyard. From our back porch to the power poll is about 12 - 15 feet is all.
It is hard to see but you can see the charred part of the power poll and some of the electrical parts.
In the 6 hours during the storm the downtown area of San Antonio received 3.02" of rain!!! We are very grateful for the rain and thankfully these violent types of storms are not common.
I think we will all be going to bed early tonight!!!
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