I ended up evacuating right into the path of Charley. Like many people in the Bay area who listened to the news, I evacuated eastward. Unfortunately, Charley made a last minute turn and forged a trek right across the center of the state instead of hitting land in the Bay area as originally predicted. So I was able to witness winds over 100 mph right before the eye of the hurricane passed over the house I was staying. The eye was amazing. We were sitting on the floor in a bedroom looking out the window because we had lost power many hours before and were bored. One minute the winds were blowing so hard that there were only a few yards of visibility and the trees that we could see were bent almost completely horizontal, the next minute, all was calm. It was freaky. Cool freaky. Jacki's dad ran out into the yard at this point and picked up some debris and turned over the basketball hoop, so it wouldn't flip and hit my car when the winds started again. The "squall lines" were also an amazing sight, walls of rain from the bands of the hurricane. Jacki and I had planned on being lazy and watching movies during the storm. We rented 10 movies to make it through the two days. We got through half of them before we lost power last night around 5. We after watching the storm, we played monopoly (i got stomped) by candle light. I am glad that I was in a safe place to weather the storm, but I do wish that I hadn't evacuated right into the storm's path. It took us a couple of hours to drive back to the Bay area this afternoon because of all of the debris in the roadways and all the people trying to trek back that also evacuated.
My parents lost power last night as well. It hasn't been turned back on for them yet. A neighbor lent them a generator so they are doing just fine. My brother and Amy seem unaffected by it all in J-ville. So good news all around.
I have to head back into work super early tomorrow to turn everything back on and finish some projects from last week that had to be put on hold for awhile...