Tropical Storm Fay at the Dirkes House

God was watchin out for us. We got over a foot of rain (yes, that is 3 times what Bakersfield gets all year) in one weekend from Fay. The water control systems worked like a charm so we haven't seen any widespread flooding locally, although there were a few roads covered here and there.

The major issue we saw was wind...here is what our backyard looks like now. We have about 4 trees that were completely blown over and 5 or 6 that had their tops snapped off. What we hear from the locals is that the tops snapping off is a tornado signature...it is very possible that we had a small one that didn't actually touch the ground. Even scarier than that is that we never knew there was one (if there was one).

Gustav doesn't look like it will hit us, but our rescue unit is standing by if we are needed on the Gulf Coast. Nothing for sure there yet, we will just have to see how it plays out.