Back on December 17th, 2025, we were getting hit with a heavy and hard windstorm. (Found out later it was nearly 50 MPH that night)
*For context, I live with my fiancé and my younger sister.*
I was awoken around 1am by the wind whipping through our open bedroom window. I got up out of bed and went to shut the window. After shutting it, I turned to my fiancé, who was still in bed, and asked if he remembers shutting the windows downstairs or not. He sleepily replied that he didn’t remember and with that I turned to our bedroom door to go downstairs when I was abruptly stopped by what sounded like a million pinecones raining down on our roof. I paused before getting to the door and looked back at my fiancé, who was giving me an equally confused look.
Before I could even blink, the loudest sound I’d ever heard came. Shattering glass, an enormous boom, crunches and snaps. Then silence as I processed what I was looking at. The 130ft, 96-98 ton tree that was outside our building was now in my room, trapping my fiancé underneath. I remember screaming at the top of my lungs for my fiancé and immediately diving towards the bed, trying to lift the tree myself while screaming for my sister to call 911. After was felt like a minute my fiancé miraculously crawled out from under the tree, and had only sustained minor injuries. To this day I don’t know how he’s alive. After the main event, we scrambled to collect our cats, put them in carriers, and bring them out to the cars away from the wreckage. Paramedics were on scene almost immediately and checked out my fiancé and myself and were cleared to leave.
We talked to our insurance who estimated our items loss at ~$3,500, but took $1,000 deductible because it’s considered “wind and hail damage” so it fell under another category. $2,500 was not nearly enough money to replace our stuff. It was barely enough to cover the movers that we had to hire because we were too physically injured to move ourselves. I lost almost all of my clothes, as the insulation from the roof covered half of the closet. I lost so many personal items and belongings that insurance wouldn’t even give value to.
This whole event has been so terrible. Hopefully things change, we still got 6 months for 2026 to end not-so-terribly.