Hurricane Irene in my neighborhood

Two blocks away

Across the street

The neighbor to our left. Hard to see but he lost a whole tree.

One block away

Just one fallen branch. That and debris was the extent of the hurricane's effect on our yard.

On Monday morning, a neighbor a few blocks away was already cutting up a fallen tree.

We were very blessed. What more can I say? We have three enormous trees on our lot and any one of them could have taken our house with it. Also, I think the hemlocks across the street are tall enough to hit our house if they fell.

Folks up in the Harvey's Lake area got it much worse than us. Many people in our county are still without power or water.

We lost power for twenty-four hours. One neighbor told me that in forty years, he hadn't lost power for more than an hour in our neighborhood. Another neighbor confirmed this. So for these folks it was a shock. For Michael especially, this was nothing new as he grew up in South Louisiana. For me, the hurricane was new, but the emergency preparation and power loss was not.

There was one amazing benefit of the whole event. Our phone rang at about 1:45 AM in the middle of the power outage. It was Michael's pharmacy. They are supposed to call his cell phone, but, oh well. I had gotten up to answer the phone and had been dreaming about seeing stars in the sky. So I got my glasses and walked outside.  I had never seen a really dark sky before. So there I was, seeing a sky full of stars for the first time in my life. It was astounding. I couldn't even find the big dipper there were so many stars competing with it. Venus was like a flashlight in my eyes. I wasn't disappointed. Just sorry I had to wait so long to see the sky as it really is.

Getting ready for Irene

It's going to be an interesting weekend. We are due for some weather associated with Hurricane Irene but we are on the outer edges of her reach. We keep a supply of stuff for emergencies but I added some more flashlight batteries, drinking water and foods that require no refrigeration or heating up yesterday. Today I got cash. Michael will gas up the third car. Two of the cars already have gas. Michael's lived through enough hurricanes that he knows the importance of having enough gas to get you somewhere out of a danger zone. We almost always have one with a full tank. This afternoon we shift some stuff around in the basement which is wet on a good day and we move into the garage anything that could blow around the yard and damage the house or our cars. We do not have garage space for the cars so will just have to hope for the best on that one.

We live far away from any creek, stream or river and high up on a mountain (relatively speaking of course compared to our daughter who lives in Utah) so we should be clear from any flooding. However, groundwater will come into the basement and if there's no electricity to power our dehumifiers, we will have water in the basement. The Susquehanna is one foot below flood stage so everyone is feeling pretty good about that as well.

Michael is in charge of emergency preparedness at his facility and they think about these things all the time. So he has huge generators there and tanks of fuel ready to be used if needed. Power outages during a blizzard are always possible so this isn't something new. 

We could ignore the whole thing which would be foolish. Much better to be prepared and to have nothing happen than to ignore the situation and find that we are indeed going to suffer from the storm.  Big question right now is whether or not we have church tomorrow as I have to give one or maybe two lessons. Only time will tell on that one.