It wasn't the worst thing ever but it was pretty scary.

I still remember this eerie feeling of waking up in the pitch black after 1 am and looking over at our open bedroom door and seeing just my 9 year old daughter frozen in the doorway during a lighting flash. I whispered so I would not wake up my wife "Are you ok?" She whispered back "Dad, I'm scared" in a shaky voice that let me know she was crying. As I went got up to comfort her I instantly felt something was wrong. It might have been the wind intensifying, but I think we were warned.

I got my 4 kids together and we all huddled in bathroom in the middle of the house. My wife was in a closest that shared a wall with the same bathroom. I am not sure why were were separated but we could hear here. People say it a lot, but it sounded like a freight train tearing through the woods around our house. We have large 20 - 30 old pines all around our property. My youngest daughter and my wife were both praying vocally as it passed by. The power was out, but we had flashlights and the lights from our cell phones, which still had service.

Afterward we went out and checked on our neighbors. Their house was worse than ours (chucks of roof structure missing and more large trees cracked down), but they were out of town. We spent the next morning chainsawing our way out of the neighborhood.

My daughter constantly is checking the weather apps on her mom's phone when bad weather comes.

Here is a drone video I took of the area behind our house before and after.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l48GypK4yns