Stormy Weather

My internet has been persnickety, so we're going to go in the way back machine to Wednesday. Wednesday I was telecommuting happily. I got an IM from a co-worker letting me know there were tornado warnings afoot and I should probably be careful. This was followed by an email warning that with the storm we might see co-workers losing power and unable to connect. (The irony is our old office always lost power during storms, although it did typically get returned fairly quickly).
I checked the weather and sure enough there were major storm warnings plus a tornado watch. And then outside as I watched, in short order it went really dark, and then the sky opened up and rain and wind worked together with such force that the cat jumped off the couch (which is near the window) and ran and hid in the closet.

It was furious and thankfully fast, because twenty minutes later it looked like this.

And then by about an hour later I had birds chirping and this.

However the multiple personality aspect continued through the rest of the evening, since it alternately stormed and lessened throughout the night.
The good news is that, in the DC area at least, while there were reports of funnel clouds and even a touch down or two, there does not appear to have been any tornado damage beyond big storm damage, although one person was sadly killed when a tree fell on the car.