LET'S NOT GET CARRIED AWAY

When the appraiser came out to assess the damage, after our roof blew away, he stood looking out over our property and said "You have one of the best views around." Then he turned back to look at our roofless house, and continued with "That means you get the best winds, too." He wasn't just whistlin' Dixie.

The gods were watching over John last Tuesday, although he would find that hard to believe, as he spent the day in Houston puking up his toenails. Here in Wimberley, we started the day off with a pretty good rain, but that had all but stopped by mid-morning. I was sitting at my computer typing, when all of a sudden a rogue gust of wind came slamming into the window in front of me, causing me to jump out of my chair. A second later I heard a huge crash coming from the direction of our driveway. I ran to the window to look out, and saw that the wind had picked up not only the patio umbrella that John forgot to lower, but also its heavy wrought iron base, and the entire teak picnic table, carried the lot about 20 feet, then dumped them practically on top of John's car (he left it here and drove the truck to Houston last time).

I ran from window to window, checking for funnel clouds, before I finally had the nerve to step outside and assess the damage. What did I find? The table was resting butt up against John's car, with maybe one to two inches of clearance, and as far as I could tell, there wasn't a scratch on it. So, here's my question. If the winds up here are strong enough to pick up that table, or even an entire roof, and can come out of nowhere without any warning, what's to stop them from picking up, say, a nice frizzy-haired woman?