I’m still writing this from a hotel room, but my house has power and internet now, so I check out in a few hours.

OK, I’ll be honest. The hotel has a really great breakfast, so I’m going to pig out, then leave! Yesterday I made an incredible microwave sandwich out of fresh croissants and brie. (The breakfast starts at 6 and I was there as it opened. The brie was gone about 6:02!)

My house and yard were undamaged. I lost no shingles from the roof and no trees at all (and I have more than 30), although I would not have complained if the winds had ripped out my effin’ plum tree. I hate that gnarled mofo, which spreads outward at an astounding rate and must produce 500 seedlings per year. It certainly keeps my chainsaw and my hedge-trimmers busy, pruning the bastard. If I ever have a chance to create the Uncle Scoopy National Forest, I’m going to just donate that one tree, and there will be a forest there in about five years. But the freakin’ thing was basically unaffected by the storm.

My neighbors were not so lucky. The neighborhood is filled with fallen trees, debris, displaced patio furniture, etc. Some major streets are still working with reduced lanes because of fallen trees or power lines.

The National Weather Service summed it up:

The worst damage appears to have been associated with a ‘macroburst,’ a large downburst of straight-line winds that affected locations from Wood/Portage counties eastward into the Fox Valley and lakeshore. Many tens of thousands of trees were snapped or uprooted, resulting in damage to dozens of homes and cottages. NWS says an EF-1 tornado was recorded in Hortonville (near me) with winds reaching 90 miles per hour.


I read that only nine tornadoes actually touched down in Wisconsin, even though they were visible everywhere, so almost all of the damage was done by winds and pelting rain. This was far better than our last tornado scare, which cut a swath down my street, tore out some of my trees, and ripped many shingles from my roof. Here’s a story of how tornadoes work. I had a large pine, maybe 30 feet tall, close to my garage. Next to it was a very large spreading maple. When the storm was over, that pine was lying on its side – on the wrong side of the maple (!!), about fifty feet from where it had once stood. The stump of the pine almost looked like it had been severed with a saw. I would love to see a video to see how the pine could possibly have gotten there, because the logistics seem impossible. My garage was undamaged, so my best guess is that the pine was uprooted, rolled out into the street, then rolled back into my yard. Meanwhile, the maple lost a few leaves and suffered no damage to any limbs thicker than a pencil. Tornado damage is so localized!

Well, that was the past.

Bottom line on this week’s storm: life is back to normal with minimal consequences. Thanks for all the good wishes.

You know things are bad when the people you hired to help you get elected say. “Please, fire us!”

Although, in all fairness, they probably don’t know which candidate he is.

The only thing I know about him is that he’s a sorta pugnacious bald dude. If Central Casting determined the role of each individual, Delaney would be the junior high football coach who also has to teach two history classes even though he majored in Phys Ed.