Yesterday I was working on our patch of land. I seeded some more radish and moved some plants and as it was really hot, I was longing for a little rain at some point of the day. Due to the weather I expected a thunderstorm. Nothing much. Just a little thunder and rain. What I got was for more than expected: at 9 p.m. the sky turned pitch black and a strong wind started to blow. It started raining too and I decided to better close the windows. A good thing. I had just sat down when I heard a loud crack. Next thing I saw was one of the trees from the other side of the street, lying flat on the street, burying at least four cars. You can’t imagine relieved I was when I realised I had parked about three cars away from that and the car did not get hit. It was crazy. But with one tree down within the first 10 minutes of the storm I was somehow sure, nothing else would hit our house or our car anymore and I viewed the storm with its endless lightning and crazy wind and rain with a strange delight.
We really usually don’t get hurricanes in Germany. Maybe every other decade a big winter storm. So when the storm calmed down at around 10 p.m. I did what everyone else was doing: I went out with my camera to capture the damage. What happened here in Dusseldorf last night was scary yet quite exciting and left lots of destruction. At least for what we are used to. Luckily only five fatalities are known in the whole region so far which is for such an unexpected storm not much, I guess. Well, some roofs got bared. Not that many though. Quite a few car got damaged and the place where Michael works lost 10 out of 12 of their 4 by 4 meters sunshades and a few benches, yet noone was hurt. But what is really sad is that it is estimated that 20% of all trees in Dusseldorf suffered sever damage or where completely destroyed last night. With so many nice parks in Dusseldorf this is really a shame.
Of course we are still struggeling with the aftermath of this storm. So today I took my camera with me to work. Our street is still impassable. It is too small to be cleared as one of the first. Everywhere you have trees and parts of trees lieing around. And because many broken branched still hanging in the trees even a small wind can be dangerous. This is why the car stays over at the basement garage at work. Just in case enother storm (they scared us all by announcing another one) hits.
Some sights are really just too bizarre and resemble strange works of modern art. But check the pictures yourself.
schnoerrchen 