The Storm

We've been without electricity for several days. We had a horrible storm blow through Towanda early Friday morning. We lost our electricity, and didn't get it back until late on Sunday.

Straight winds up to 86 miles an hour blew through our town. We woke up around 5am when the electricity went off. Bob went downstairs to see if our sump was filling up since the electric pump couldn't pump the water out. When he walked by the front door, there was water standing on the tile floor. The wind was blowing so hard that it blew rain in around the frame of our door and flooded the floor.

We had to stay up and bail water out of the sump so that it wouldn't flood the basement. They closed both Bob's school and the kids' school because of the storm damage and power outage. I got dressed in the dark and went to work.

I drove through Towanda on my way. Many, many trees were split or uprooted. Many of the windows in downtown Towanda had been blown out and roofs were damaged. There were downed electrical lines everywhere.

And on the edge of Towanda, there has always stood an old red barn and a silo. The silo has the name Towanda painted on it, and the W is crooked. It's kind of an icon that represents our little town. When we first moved to town, the kids told me that the W was crooked because the man painting the words on it had fallen to his death and when he fell the paint was smeared. They left the W crooked in his honor. I told them that was probably not true...it sounded like an urban legend to me. But the kids went down to our local museum one day and found out that it WAS true.

When I drove through town, the barn and the silo were completely gone. The whole lot there was wiped clean and pieces of the barn were all over Towanda. I was really sad to see it gone.

The only picture I could find of it was a drawing by a local. I included the drawing and a link to her blog.

http://vickylw.livejournal.com/24859.html