Mother nature can be twisted, indeed. This summer will definitely go down in the history books as the summer of twin tornados. It’s the talk of the town. They officially confirmed there were two F1’s that did some pretty destructive work. We suffered a tree through the roof, but fared a lot better than some. Luckily everyone was okay! Since we took a bunch of photos and videos for insurance purposes, we might as well share ’em.
Here’s the aftermath and tree removal. This footage is sped up to x10. Before you think we were lounging about, know we were pulling our weight chopping and hauling logs from the front yard. We lost three or four trees up front and we wanted to harvest the fire wood. Insurance only covers trees that hit your house, so we rolled up our sleeves and pulled a 14-hour day of lumberjacking.
Thank you so much to everyone who came out to help or lend us chainsaws, boom trucks or wood splitters, or if you cooked us a meal or lent us a shower or hot cup of coffee while the power was out. You know who you are.
Living Through a Tornado
Fun fact: Tornados are my biggest fear in life. At least they were until we actually experienced one firsthand. Running the risk of sounding overly dramatic, I’ll try to paint the picture of how it all went down. July 12th, 2017. It was a dark and stormy night … just kidding. I won’t get that level of theatrical on you.
But the whole storm did come on without any warning or sirens. I remember it was a perfect night and I looked at the upcoming forecast and saw nothing on the radar but clear skies.
What woke us up from a dead sleep was a tree falling on the roof right over our heads at 2:45 am. There wasn’t even time to be afraid, for better or worse. We all knew it was serious and could only react, running on pure adrenaline. It was one of those moments where time freezes temporarily, and everything is crystal clear. When your heartbeat seems to slow way down and all your energy is used to survey the situation and those prehistoric animal-brain instincts kick in, automatically and miraculously telling your body how to breathe and pump blood and focus in on one piece of information at a time. And then it was over.
Not quite like The Matrix, but kinda. After the main smash and gusts of wind, only lasting 15-20 minutes, the boys were in fix-it mode. I stayed downstairs and could hear Joe cursing up a storm of his own, dealing with water coming into the house and a big ol’ tree in a closet. After several hours of fumbling around in the dark with only flashlights, we made some key phone calls, checked on the negihbors and assessed the damage until the morning. I don’t think Joe slept a wink, but I fell back asleep somewhere between 5 and 6 am until the sound of camera crews and service vehicles woke me up around 8. Then I took a little walk around the block with my point-and-shoot.
Neighborhood Walkabout
This is our large tree that split and landed in the new neighbors’ house.
We were even featured on a state news channel and our neighbor is on camera saying, “I just moved in two months ago.” Nothing says, ‘Welcome to the neighborhood’ like a tree through the kitchen.
We’re not sure if this one was struck by lightning or not. These trees usually uproot, so we were all lucky that it didn’t. It would have been even worse.
They definitely took the brunt of this one.
Here’s our neighbors’ deck two houses down. Speared by a large branch.
Here’s a smaller tree that hit our garage.
It split and landed on itself so elegantly, just teetering on a toothpick.
Another tree down the street.
Pretty much everywhere you looked.
Power Lines
Two huge power lines a couple streets down.
Remember all those lovely power lines I was worried about?
Yeah, they all went down. 
Went down in flames, actually. There was power arcing in the streets at 3 am, so Joe had to call 911.
The fire department couldn’t even get down our street until the next day. We were without power for two full days.
The sheriffs’ department called us personally to make sure we were all okay. Seriously, the first responders and work crews were all amazing! The tree removal company worked their tails off.
More down power lines outside our driveway.
And more. 
And a few more.
Huge trees were uprooted.
For scale.
Our House
I know we wanted to focus on outdoor projects this year, but maybe we should be careful what we wish for next time…
It was like a jungle for a couple days.
With random pieces of different houses scattered around.
I don’t think this was ours.
Here’s the tree we took. Technically the neighbors’ tree. It’s crazy that their tree went straight north into us and our tree went southeast into them. But the patio umbrella that always flies away, even if you blow on it, was perfectly still. Meanwhile, deck boxes and beach chairs were launched half a football field away. Definitely some rotation happening, we just knew.
Here’s the majority of the damage to our roof.
The second big tree struck just above our roommate’s closet. There was water leaking down from the ceiling here and down into the basement.
Of course, Joe jumped up into the attic not 15 mintes after the tree hit to put a bucket up there and caulk the roof. That actually probably saved us a bunch of extra water damage, not that I endorse being up there during a storm.
We know for sure there are about six trusses cracked.
Our priority that week was clearing away the brush, logs and debris.
Hoping to head into the repair phase soon, but there are a few steps between here and there.
You really can’t help but stand back and be in awe.
Kind of beautiful.
This is a great angle. Again, we were lucky it didn’t fall any further into the house. Or if the trees had reversed falling roles, we would have both taken on much worse damage. Pure weirdness.
This used to be our hammock tree. :,(
The carribeaner just snapped like a twig. 
View of tree in our house.
When Life Gives you Lemons
We have enough firewood for about 10 years, so it’s a good thing we like having indoor fires during the Minnesota winters. We’ll need to save on heating since we just lost the biggest source of shade over our house. Hello AC bill hike.
This is only a very small pile. We’re almost done splitting wood, a month later.
The werid thing is, it was all kind of fun. I know that sounds derranged (and it could have been because we were a little sleep deprived and slightly bewildered), but we didn’t get discouraged. We were happy to be alive and safe. We’re happy to still have more trees. We have a friend who lost all their trees. We know neighbors whose docks were completely corkscrewed, whose pontoons flipped and whose houses split into multiple pieces. We feel very lucky, and to be honest, we’re still in the thick of it and probably haven’t had enough time and space to fully decompress and reflect. We are grateful there are good people in the world to step up and lend a hand when disaster strikes. And if not having running water and power for two days was the worst of it, we are pretty blessed. Plus, I got to use my lantern collection!
Not that everything is peachy, I’m just saying situations like that have a way of putting life into perspective. And you know what? I’m not so afraid of storms anymore, honestly. I’ve conquered my big fear. Currently, we’re weeding through insurance claims, contractors, timelines, budgets and line items. This part may turn out to be the scary part! We’ll keep you posted. I already have some good tips and we’re learning so much. But damn if I’m not ready for it to be fall already.
