A bad day to be a St. Louisan

Hi all. I'm sitting at a cafe that remarkably has power and using their free wifi. I came here to enjoy the comfort of the air conditioning. I have no idea what the news is saying, as I haven't been able to use a t.v. in awhile, but we had one hell of a storm yesterday. I'm not sure what it was, actually, mostly it was just wind. A little rain at the tail end, but not much. But for an hour or so yesterday, wind blew and took everything with it. It was one of the scariest storms I've ever been in. Trees uprooted or broken. Houses and cars smashed all over the place. A few old historic buildings have collapsed near my house. None of the street lights work (most of them actually came off the poles) so I now live in a city full of 4-way stops. It's crazy. The majority of the city and the surrounding counties have no power. There are a few blocks here and there that do. They're saying my zip code won't have power for 3-5 days, which is inconvenient because this week is also supposed to be one of the hottest in history. We are, however, some of the lucky ones. My sister's house has no damage. Pieces of debris everywhere in the yard, but none of it came off of our house. The people behind us had their roof smashed in by a large tree. Ugh. Well, I'm going to go read the paper online. If you'd like to read about the storm, try www.stltoday.com. That's our newspaper. I hope everyone else is safe and sound.

love - jess