This is one of those things that you had to be there to really know the depth of the experience. It was scary when the winds came swooping into Spokane. It was Tuesday and the wind was blowing a bit all day. These 70-80 mile winds were forecast. As the day progressed the winds got stronger and stronger. At 3:00 PM we rushed the students out of school and they were all screaming because the wind was so strong AND the buses were late. Nice! After we got the kids where they were supposed to be we were told to leave the school. No staying late to work or clean up our classrooms. When I got to my car and opened the car door I thought it was going to break off. It didn't. To close the door I had to use two hands and pull hard. I had to put my foot on the ground for leverage to get the door moving the right direction. I knew this wasn't going to be good. As I got close to home I saw street lights flicker and then go out. Mike called! No power. My next text was "generator"! Mike had purchased a generator two summers ago because of a windstorm during the summer that took our power out for a couple of days. Good call Mr. Mike Gleason! That night he got the generator started. The wind lasted hours. It didn't just blast through quickly. We would think, AHHH it is dying down and whoosh it came roaring though again.
We were without power for 4 days. We were very fortunate to have the generator which kept our food safe and gave us some light. We have a gas water heater so showers were taken. We have a fireplace that blows out heat so we had one warm room. At night we bundled up under the covers with two wool blankets Mike uses for hunting. So many other people had none of that and for a lot of days. As I type this on Thanksgiving, a week and two days after the storm there are still people without power. There are power companies from all over that came to help us and are still working on this Thanksgiving Day! God Bless them! Wednesday morning we had coffee and light in the kitchen thanks to our generator.
We got the TV hooked up so we could keep track of what was going on. A little entertainment too.
Mr. Hunter got his camp stove out and cooked us warm food. It got really cold and he was out there taking care of us! We did move the stove inside after we got settled.
Our power source.
Breakfast!
Mike got a load of wood for us to use in the fireplace. Our fireplace does not have an insert but it has a fan that blows out the hot air. Good stuff. I was the unloader of this pile.
Mike said that this wire that was dipping into our backyard was not a power line. How do you know? I touched it. REALLY!!! Glad it wasn't a power line. It was for our Internet.
Day one was sort of an adventure. No school and camping out at home. Day 4 didn't feel like much of an adventure. Mike was on it!! He went into his camping mode. I was very thankful for all the work he did.
Stacking time!
The master chef is going at it!
Shingles from your roof are not supposed to be on the ground. That was really the only damage we had and it was minor compared to others.
Every car in Spokane looked like this if they were outside during the wind.
Oh my! I actually did not lose my dish washing skills.
Cords everywhere!
This is what was on the grill for breakfast. Mike cooked some for our neighbor that did not have a generator. Our neighbor ended up staying with another neighbor. When you look around every day and see the bad in our world it is times like these, where people chip in to help each other without a second thought, that you know there is more good than bad in the world. People truly care about each other!
The finished product.
I wanted to get some gas on Wednesday and get my car washed. I took my camera and this was the first thing I saw. One downed basketball hoop. These was so much more!
This house is three houses down from us.
Between the trees it looks like a giant bush but it isn't. It is a huge tree down. All the trees that were down made it a maze to get to anything.
Another tree down on it's side.
You will see a picture of a dump truck later and it is hauling away this tree. You can see how huge it is by the man walking by.
A survivor!
Another surviving tree on the right. The traffic was backed up because the signal lights were out.
The yellow tape was everywhere! Don't go down this street, that street. The first gas station I went to was closed.
This street is Garland. It was closed because of a tree falling in the street. Look behind the car farthest to the right! You can click on the picture to make it bigger too.
Can't go down this street.
The next picture is a closer picture of this one. An Avista truck has a clamp on the power pole so it doesn't fall.
There it is!
This is a neighbors fallen tree! What a mess to clean up! You will see a picture later with all the limbs cut off.
Our alley has tons of trees, well all of Spokane does, and most of the trees in our alley survived the wind.
This tree is in our backyard. We have one in the front yard too. Neither one of them crashed, thankfully. On Tuesday after I got home Mike said we should get in the basement just in case.
A fireplace in the evening! Like I said we had it better than a lot of people.
We had some left over chili too.
This was our one wood issue which really wasn't an issue. This was in our screen. It was about 4 inches long!
Murphy found the warmest spot in the house.
I little ice cream for dessert.
There is the dump truck I talked about earlier.
The neighbor's tree with all the limbs cut off ready to remove.
The clean up started right away.
Tree roots!
That's a tree not bushes. These are cell phone pictures which aren't as clear.
Three days with no school and no power. The Avista crew was in our neighborhood! We had power after 4 days. I went to Snowlander, a winter sport expo, and when I got back the generator was still going. Boo! Still no power. I forgot Mike wasn't home to turn the generator off. I walked into the house and saw light. I turned the generator off and started unplugging all the extension cords and singing praises to God and thanking the power companies. We were fine but many didn't have what we did and it was much harder on those people. Mike talked to a crew that was from Minnesota. They came to help us get power back in Spokane.
These pictures don't even come close to representing what happened on November 17, 2015. On this Thanksgiving I am thankful for the hard working people getting us connected again, for a generator what provided us power, for Mike who jumped in and got things working and cooked for us, for our safety during this storm and for our internet being back on today so I could blog this!
Mike said that this wire that was dipping into our backyard was not a power line. How do you know? I touched it. REALLY!!! Glad it wasn't a power line. It was for our Internet. 
