I must have made a humorous sight standing in my shorts on a stepladder, trying to cut a branch swaying 10 feet above me with a curved saw on the end of a stick.

The branch snapped in Tuesday’s severe storm but was still hanging on somehow, although the leaves beyond the break were curled up and it dangled precariously over the driveway.

Plenty of branches came down in our yard, but miraculously they avoided the cars and the house. The top of one tree between us and our neighbor was broken off, falling on a fence but causing virtually no damage.

Compared to so many others we were unscathed. I was reminded of our good fortune countless times Tuesday and in the days that followed. The devastation to sections of this city and Cranston was worse than I’ve seen in the wake of blizzards and hurricanes.

I didn’t need to go far to realize the fury and power of this storm.

Just two blocks away, a giant swamp maple lay across West Shore Road. The tree looked to have been uprooted as if some giant hand had reached down and pulled it out of the ground like an offensive weed. Only this tree had to be at least 60 feet high with a trunk as big around as a patio table. It crushed a utility pole, spewing wires across the road. Amazingly, as this is a busy commuter road even at 6:15, no one was hurt.

I surveyed the scene, taking photos and talking with the elderly gentleman who watched the storm from a porch window and saw the tree “lift” before being hurled to the ground.

That was bad enough, and I didn’t expect to find worse.

Unfortunately, I was wrong. Trees blocked roads everywhere. They cut into roofs, splintered sheds and flattened cars. The Veterans Memorial rink in Cranston – the “Bubble,” as it is known – was gone. The door to the facility still stood, as did some of the rink boards. The metal bleachers were bent, and remnants of the white fabric bubble were heaped like snowdrifts.

And they were calling this just a severe thunderstorm? I was finding that description more difficult to believe with virtually each turn I made.

Accounts of the storm were remarkably similar. People were getting ready for their day. Some were already at work, like Steve Costa, who works the first shift at Electric Boat, when he got a call from his wife Karen that a tree had been pulled from the ground, smashing into their home on Harvard Avenue in Cranston. She told of looking out the window and not being able to see anything because of the darkening sky and heavy downpour. Channel 10’s Mario Hilario, who lives in the Garden City neighborhood, had already posted a picture to Facebook of the carpet-like section of lawn the tree’s root system held suspended 10 feet into the air.

Sue Hart, who was taking care of a neighbor’s dog, had just walked back to her house on Leigh Street in Warwick when everything turned black. Sounding like a train, the sudden wind snapped a tall pine in her yard, flinging it across her house. She yelled inside to her sister, Lin, who was taking a shower. While the tree rocked the house and broke through the roof, Lin was all right. It could have been much worse.

Not too far away, Patricia Pollock sensed something was happening when the interior of her home overlooking the new Winslow Park playing fields and Green Airport darkened. She pulled back the kitchen curtains. Day had turned to night. Then came the crash almost above her, and seconds later another crash. She instantly sat down on the floor, fearing the roof might cave in. On inspection, she found the limbs had cut through the roof, second floor and into the rooms on the first floor. She felt blessed to have averted injury. It could have been much worse.

While all of that was happening, Greta Saint Leger was riding a RIPTA bus from Providence to Warwick, where she works at Saint Elizabeth Terrace. Yes, there had been wind and rain. It had been awfully dark, but the storm passed. She was annoyed the bus driver wouldn’t drive around the block to avoid the tree across West Shore Road and get her to work.

That’s the way it was. Sections of Chatham Village, Governor Francis Farms, Hoxsie, Warwick Neck – just to name some of the neighborhoods – had been whacked, yet just yards away a few sticks and leaves were the only evidence of the storm.

I was one of the lucky ones, as were my immediate neighbors. We were without power, but there was nothing that couldn’t be tidied up without cutting up some branches and raking the lawn.

By Sunday, that was all done. Life was back to normal. That wasn’t the case for so many others. They were forced from their homes. They had lost freezers filled with food, or worse, their cars and trucks. No one lost their lives or had been seriously injured. It could have been worse.

I marveled at that while perched on my ladder and thought better of my foolhardy attempt to bring down a dandling branch. Why tempt fate?

Better yet, leave it as a symbol that we all survived the storm.