I’m ok. But I had a close call. I live in the Hill Country, just northwest of Austin, and we’ve experienced an extreme weather event over the last few days. You’ve probably read about it. And I’ve been in the middle of it, not on the edge.

A house 200 yards from me, down my driveway, was washed away. Saturday, EMS personnel with grappling hooks knocked on my door to tell me they were going to be going down the creek in my back yard, looking for bodies.

I’ve always been a bit of a weather freak and usually keep up with local weather wherever I’ve been. And my experience with this here is that there really wasn’t any warning. Friday night late I didn’t unplug my internet to protect equipment as there was nothing in the forecasts to warn of what was coming. Then about 1 AM I got a phone message from the county about an emergency, plus I could hear a lot of thunder. So I got up, unplugged things and went back to bed.

When I woke at 7 AM, actually the worst had already happened. What’s being called “an inland hurricane” suddenly formed west of me in the Hill Country and many rivers and creeks, normally nearly dry, rose 30 feel in a few hours.

I got around 8 to 10 inches of rain in 30 hours, about 25 centimeters. My house is relatively on high ground, above a small creek that runs through my property, which is totally dry for most of the time year round. But when I looked Saturday morning, it was the highest I’ve ever seen it. The rushing water in the night had totally rearranged a rock wall of very large stones I had along the creek, scattering them everywhere. Still, the house was holding through the rain and we weren’t in danger of flooding, as far as I could see. But there was more to come.

Saturday afternoon a second set of emergency workers came to my door, sent from Travis County. They were polite but very sober and told me they were going house-to-house in my area, recommending people to evacuate immediately.

They were talking about what I’d already seen on-line:  another very large storm was due to come through in the next few hours. There had already been so much rain that the ground everywhere was soaked so all the rain just ran off into the creeks and small rivers which were already ragingly full. It was this danger of another big wave of storms that increased the danger that my creek could really rise dramatically. That’s why they were telling people to evacuate.

Knowing the topography around my house, I wasn’t utterly convinced that a storm like that would cause my creek to rise that much that it would flood my house. But the EMS guy reminded me that a few hours earlier the river in Kerrville had risen 25 feet in 45 minutes, killing dozens.

So it was a real time of looking to the Lord for me. I decided to immediately pack down my most essential things and pulled the car around to where I could load them up and be ready to go. I also phoned a relative to ask if I could stay over with them if things got really worse.

But then, this is where prayer and the Lord’s intervention really came through. I was keeping up with the weather reports and there was a huge orange mass on the weather radar that was rushing towards us from the west. It looked to hit in about 2 hours and bring another surge of water on top of what was already here.

And then… Thank the Lord, really surprisingly the storm surge just mainly dissipated over the next hour and the forecast changed to where there were only showers predicted in the late evening. I dialed back my plans to evacuate and was just mighty glad that circumstances had changed so rapidly.

Of course there is so much more I could tell you. A bridge on the road I take into town was destroyed and I will have to take a detour for some time. Many bridges in the area are washed away and the loss of life is high. At the same time, there’s been a real wave of volunteers rising up everywhere to respond to all this, something that is part of the culture here. And both the political left and right have begun framing the event through their own narratives, trying to sway people to their viewpoints.

A while back I wrote “The whirlwind and the storm” about a time here in Austin when a tornado went over the house I was in and then touched down about a kilometer away. I’m again grateful and humbled by His protection over my life. And also touched to know that so many of those who died in this tragedy were Christians who’ve gone on to a life in heaven.

And, one last thought, thanks to the many of you who have prayed for me over the years. That storm that was approaching just seemed to dissolve rather suddenly. Truly, thank God.