Humberto

Last night was really strange.  I went to bed thinking that Humberto was just a tropical storm.  I couldn’t sleep due to the noises the wind was causing my house to make. 
About two hours after I laid down, the power went out and came back on several times.  I heard a bang in the living room and went in there to find that my screen door was being banged around by the very strong winds.  It was banging up against the door, making an awful noise.  I would have opened the door and closed the screen door completely, but I didn’t want to risk a bodily accident by opening the door.  Then the power went out. 
I then noticed that the wind was driving rain into the living room window on the north side of the house.  It was coming in pretty quickly.  I put some towels on the window and tried to at least stop some of the water from coming in.  I didn’t seem to be making much of a difference.Christle called her mom to find out what the storm was up to, and that’s how we found out that Humberto was a hurricane.  We also found out about where the path was.

We live a few miles east of where I-10 turns N/E to go to Beaumont, and the storm was just south of us.  Basically, the only thing we could think to do was to pray, get dressed in case we had to leave the house, and wait it out. 
It took about an hour and a half before the wind started to die down, and another hour for power to be restored.  Before the power was restored, I was able to look out the kitchen window, because the screen had been blown off, and saw that water was standing over my driveway.  That’s the deepest I’ve ever seen the water level here.
I went outside and found that the screen door had been shattered, and glass was all over the porch.  Our swing set was folded over on itself.  Tree limbs were all over the place… I only specify ‘tree’ limbs, because there were no other type of limbs (separated from their host) anywhere on the property.  The water was flowing very swiftly because it appeared to really want to get off my property and away from all the limbs… maybe it was confused about what type of limbs they were.
I finally got to sleep sometime around 5:30am.  I got to work around noon.
This is where I have to explain the lesson I learned from this experience.  Ever since evacuating for Rita two years ago, I have held to the plan of staying around instead of evacuating for another hurricane.  I will not stay home, thanks to this experience.  Worrying about the safety of my wife and kids during this was too much to handle.  Given the choice, I’d much rather deal with traffic than to go through this again.