Hot off the Press!

More China photos to follow, but first -- Breaking News!

Last night we had the worst storm I have ever experienced. It was truly ferocious -- didn't last much more than 45 minutes but the rain was torrential, the winds tornado-like and the continuous fork lightning was quite frightening.

There was something different about this storm and, although I am not usually afraid, I was quite apprehensive about it.

The power went off almost immediately, so we couldn't use the TV to find out what was going on -- we were kept busy anyway, making sure the driveway drain didn't get plugged (we get floods in the basement if it overflows) and keeping an eye on our elderly neighbour's eavestrough which gets constantly plugged and overflows (again causing basement flooding, if we are not careful).

As the storm eased off, since we were in the dark, we each went off to separate parts of the house -- DOTH to watch a DVD on her portable player and me to listen to my iPod (how is it that we can't live without technology, even for a moment!).

Suddenly, I was aware that the house (inside) was radiating an eery yellow colour. It was supposed to be dark (it was after 8:00pm), but all through the house the atmosphere was yellow. Looking through the windows we could see that the skies were yellow - not with sun, but just yellow -- almost like a yellow dust-storm up in the heavens.

So I headed outside with my camera. The neighbours were all doing the same thing -- none of us had seen anything like it before. Here is what I captured:

I don't know if you can tell, but it was almost like flourescent lighting out there. The white dots are rain on the camera lens.

This was the scene to the west of us. You can see the beginnings of a rainbow, to the middle right above, and middle left, below

The skies were getting angrier, and angrier. It was only drizzling where we are, but you could tell something was going on off to the west of us. Below was the view off to the east of us.The power was off all night -- came on around 9:00am this morning. We then heard on the TV that there had actually been two tornadoes, off to the west of us -- in Vaughan and Woodbridge. One little boy was killed in Woodbridge, and people in both areas are very 'spooked.' As they say, "Nothing like this has ever happened around here before."

We have been very blessed in the Toronto area -- very few disasters, and then really only minor ones compared to the U.S (Katrina etc). So we thank the Lord today for His mercy, and pray for those who lost their little boy and the about 150 families whose homes may have to be demolished.