DogDaz Zoo

Friday’s Derecho aftermath. Pull out the chainsaws!

Mommy, it is really hot! When is the air conditioner coming back on?

I will just keep rolling in the grass and eating sticks. That should cool me off and help Mommy clean up at the same time.

They say we had a Derecho Friday night. Sounded like a freight train to us. Aftermath looks like a tornado. Thanks to Wikipedia and The Weather Channel, I now know that a derecho is a widespread and long-lived, violent convectively induced straight-line windstorm that is associated with a fast-moving band of severe thunderstorms in the form of a squall line usually taking the form of a bow echo. Derechos blow in the direction of movement of their associated storms, similar to a gust front, except that the wind is sustained and generally increases in strength behind the “gust” front. A warm weather phenomenon, derechos occur mostly in summer, especially June and July in the Northern Hemisphere. They can occur at any time of the year and occur as frequently at night as in the daylight hours.

The dogs were fast asleep already in their beds.  Storm came through around 11 PM (23:00 hrs).  Sofie started going crazy.  I opened the kennel doors and lied on the floor with them.  All the humans huddled in the bed room and we listened.  Then the transformers outside the house blew – one then two.   Power gone.  The storm past in maybe 30 or 40 minutes.  It was to dark to see outside but we figured we had ‘weathered’ the worst.

Morning came and it appeared mostly to be tree damage on the grounds and in the pool for us.  My neighbor, sadly, had 2 trees fall, one into each side of their roof, totally destroying the upper level of the home and the deck (that is their yard in the picture).  I can live with cleaning up leaves and no power compared to that.

The dogs were very good. When we first came out in the morning I wasn’t thinking, but of course, the gates would all have blown open (actually the wind was so strong that slates blew off the main gate). I ran to the main gate to find both dogs standing there inside the yard line, thinking about what this really meant and should they run.  They didn’t, I closed and secured the gates, and life went on.

The current temperature is over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 Celsius) during the days with no end in sight. Because we live on a peninsula, we are the first to lose power and the last to get it back (or so it seems). After losing power for 2 weeks last year, I finally got a gas generator. To run the refrigerator, a light and some fans, I had to drive 30 miles into Baltimore to get gas, but it was worth it.  The dogs are hot.  They keep wanted to know where the air conditioning is.  Everyone is napping a lot.  I am worried about the old cat, Muffin, his breathing is poor even in a cool house so this is very stressful on an old system, so I am forcing him to stay down stairs with us in front of the fan.

You never know when a strong wind or a ‘not thinking’ person is going to leave the gate open.  That is why the dogs wear name collars with my mobile phone number on them.  I guess you just never know when a Derecho is going to blew through.

Just another DogDaz morning at the zoo ❤