Reid & Katie Madsen

The forecast was for thunderstorms throughout the night, so before going to bed on April 8th, I decided to check the local 24×7 weather channel. The radar views of central and north Texas were disturbing. A stationary front extended from central Texas, through Dallas, and all the way up into Missouri and points north. And to make matters a bit more dicey a long line of thunderstorms were visible along that front moving towards Dallas.We’d already had one pretty strong thunderstorm earlier that evening, and the prospects of 4, or 5, more like it were troubling. So, I decided to stay up and keep an eye on the weather. About every hour or so, another thunderstorm would pass over us, with each being increasingly violent. At 4:00am the last, and worst of the bunch passed through Plano. This storm brought heavy, heavy, rain, strong straight-line winds up to 70-80 mph, and violent lightning and thunder. At about 4:15am, a bolt of lighting hit the power pole in the alley and the transformer on that pole exploded. The winds were the strongest we have ever experienced in Plano, and we were headed for the closet under the staircase for protection. By 4:30am it became apparent that the storm was lessening and that we were safe from any tornado risk. At about 5:00am, everything was calm and we all went back to bed.

The next morning, April 9th, we drove around our’s and adjacent neighborhoods to view the damage. The most visible damage was to the trees and fences. There was very little damage to homes — other than that caused by the falling trees. I’ve posted pictures of the damage here.

Our neighbors on both sides had damage to their trees. Ours came through okay. I attribute this to the fact that I had the trees thinned last year which lessened their resistance to the wind.

Nothing about Texas is boring (okay, maybe Highway 287 between Wichita Falls and Amarrillo).