Well, we made it. Hurricane Ike did not blow our house down, but the winds did cause some damage around the outside of my house.

We had power until about 4:15am, despite the 20+ power surges that came and went throughout the night. My brother lost power around 8:30pm. My dad lost power around 11pm. My girlfriends family lost power sometime around midnight, but we were lucky enough to have power until about 4am, which is when the winds of Hurricane Ike really started to pick up in my area.

Once we lost power, we stayed up for a while longer, but eventually fell asleep due to the darkness that surrounded us. The winds were swirling around us at speeds higher than I’ve ever experienced. The trees outside my window were dancing to the rhythm of the wind. The rain was coming down horizontally. The transformer in my neighbor’s backyard kept making loud noises, which I assume was it trying to start up again.

When the morning came, and Hurricane Ike was long past us, I went outside to analyze the damage that Ike brought upon us.

Compared to Galveston and communities closer to the shore, we were pretty lucky. My fence in the backyard has basically been crumpled. The supporting posts planted into the ground have been snapped at the very bottom. It appears that the wind and the ground played a quick game of tug-of-war, but the ground was no match to the powerful wind swirling around my house.

Multiple trees around my house have been snapped like twigs. The largest branch that was broken has the radius of approximately 7 inches. My driveway was blocked by a three large branches that were broken towards the top of my tree. I managed to pull them out of the way just enough to pull my car out of the driveway, but without power I can’t use my electric chainsaw to chop up the rest of it and safely clear it all away.

When I first walked outside, everything was covered in green. There are thousands of leaves covering everything in site. My car was covered in green. The street was completely green. Even my garage door had a greenish-leopard pattern.

Even though the wind died down by the time the sun came up, it still rained until about 1pm. I spent the next three days cleaning up all of the debris in my yard and in the street. It took fifteen 55-gallon black trash bags filled with leaves & twigs and a pile of branches that measured about 8 feet wide, and 4 feet high.

All in all… I realize that it could’ve been worse. Alot worse. One look at any Hurricane Ike photo gallery, especially of Galveston, will painfully bring reality back into perspective.