Last night we had the most insane thunderstorm I've ever witnessed. We hadn't heard a forecast on TC so figured we'd keep the windows open overnight,. Then Hubs checked the weather radar and learned that Environment Canada had issued severe thunderstorm and tornado watches for our area. They were certainly correct about 'severe'!
It started about 12:30 AM. The lightning and thunder were non-stop for over 90 minutes. I've never seen a storm like this one before. It was sky lightning and every 1-2 seconds, the entire sky lit up, almost as bright as daylight. And the thunder was unusual too - a persistent loud roar and rumble, not cracks and bangs except for a couple at the start of the storm. The storm was right on top of us but it covered a large area. And the rainfall was very heavy too. Amazingly our power stayed on; we're so used to power outages here that we just made sure we had flashlights and candles handy just in case.
Two very large trees came down with their tops resting about 21 feet away from our house, close to our bedroom. Way too close for our comfort! One of them had partially fallen in storms/high winds last year but it was caught up in other trees. Last night's storm finally brought it down to the ground when it also uprooted another large tree. We've had quite a few trees toppled by high winds this year; that's a lot of firewood but now that we spend winters in AZ, we don't need that much wood!
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| 2 large trees; greater sections of their trunks were in the woods |
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| View of the tree tops from our balcony |
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Tops of the trees about 21 ft away from the house;
doesn't look like much here but there are lots of large branches there. |
My step-son who lives in Guelph, ON was
not so fortunate. A large tree limb crashed down on the corner of his house. He was supposed to fly to Winnipeg, Manitoba this morning but had to postpone his trip to deal with the damage. And more severe weather is forecast for tonight!
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| Tree hits his house |
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| Tree narrowly misses his car & deck |
Anyway, throughout it all our 3 Vizslas were calm, cool and collected. Thank goodness none suffers from thunderstorm phobia or anxiety. I attribute this both to good breeding of dogs with sound (pardon the pun) temperaments but also to the desensitization I do for all of my puppies. From the time their ears open (usually around the same time as their eyes at 10 days), I start to play CD's with scores of different sounds, slowly increasing the volume until it's almost deafening. When they are in the whelping box, they are nursing which is exceedingly pleasurable for them so they begin to associate loud noises with a positive stimulus.
