Living Off Grid – Tornado in Washington State?

Reader Contribution by Ed Essex
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The sky was black at 4:00 pm on Friday, July 20, 2012. It had been getting darker and darker all day long. Finally the thunder and lightning kicked in and then the rain and hail started coming down. Biggest hailstones I have seen in person although I know they can get even bigger.

It’s actually kind of fun to watch these kinds of storms out our front windows. The only things I ever worry about are the solar panels being hit by giant hail or direct lightening strikes. So far no worries.

It rained so hard for so long that I went down to the barn to check the one drain pipe we have on the property to see if it was being overwhelmed and that’s when lightening hit right over our house. No way I was going to walk back to the house until it settled down or moved on. After about ½ hour I felt safe enough to venture back out and get to the house.

The storm continued on all night. Worst storm I have ever been around. We got up the next morning and were glad to see we didn’t have any damage anywhere. I wasn’t so sure about our access road though. It is 3 miles long and drops over 1000 feet from our house to the highway. It’s a perfect scenario for washout. I know how to build roads and this one wasn’t built. They just took a D8 Cat and ran up the hill once and back down. No culverts or water channels – nada.

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