I have! Actually, I've been hit by 2 in the past three days!! A derecho is when the damaging winds race ahead of the heavy rainfall along a gust front of a thunderstorm, or a cluster of thunderstorms. As you may have heard or read, the St. Louis Area was hit hard Wednesday evening by the first round. It was so strange to see a storm of this magnitude, and the direction it was coming, allowed us to acutally sit on our front porch and watch the whole thing. 100 year old oak trees were bending in half. Trees were down on every block, making it very hard to get around the neighborhood. Power went out and I gathered up the candles. At about 9pm I went to get ice from one of the only stores in the area that still had power. We emptied out refrigerator into coolers. At 10pm, it was still 93 degrees. We were one of the very fortunate ones to have power restored around 4am on Thursday morning. We spent most of the day cleaning up broken branches, helping neighbors, providing air conditioning to the kids whose power was still out. A few even spent the night. We think we are in the clear and it won't be long until everyone is back up and running. WHAM!! Friday morning sends another derecho busting through the metro area for a second time, knocking out power again, sending the number of people without power back up over 500,000. Back to the only store with power, driving is getting to be a challenge. Between dodging trees in the streets, and idiots that don't know how to stop at a light signal when it's not working. People everywhere are cranky. Back to putting all the food into coolers. BUT before you know it, it's starting to cool off. The front moves through. And the neighbors are all out on their porches. One by one, they come by with their coolers, forming a derecho party on my front porch!! After three beers and a brat, there are smiles again. Then the air conditioner kicks on, YEA! It's back on AGAIN! But it's cooled off, and everyone is enjoying themselves, we stay on the front porch till 10 or so. Today there are even more people on that haven't been on since Wednesday evening. In closing, be prepared to deal with a natural disaster when it occurs. And be thankful for electricity, you don't really realize how much you take things for granted until it's taken from you in 100 degree weather.