Prelude to Fall

When the hurricane season appears and school begins, fall isn't far around the corner. As a Florida native, I thought I had left hurricanes behind when I moved to Pennsylvania. Irene was one of only a few that I have experienced in 45 years in this region. Fortunately, my personal experience wasn't as dramatic as the problems that other people encountered, but I never underestimate the power of even a category 1 hurricane or a tropical storm.

I know from experience in the South that hurricanes can be devastating so I did not object when officials and weather people warned that we should get prepared. They did a good job in preparing for the worst case scenario. It is good that the storm didn't intensify and I don't mind that I prepared more than it turned out that I needed. I would rather do that than needing something and not having prepared. I didn't feel it was "over-hyped". We were just lucky it didn't get worse. It is unfortunate that some people lost their lives and some had awful flooding problems. They probably don't think it was "over-hyped". Kudos to those responsible for emergency preparedness. I'm celebrating that it wasn't worse.

We had only a little dampness in our basement, but the whole community lost electrical power. We were lucky that it only remained off for 27 hours. We had planned to head for a motel if it stayed off for a second day. When the stores sold out of batteries in advance, we were able to order online and get them shipped overnight express. They arrived in a nick of time. We prefer using flashlights and avoiding the danger of candles, but we played scrabble by candlelight one night. It is a good reminder to appreciate the basics.

I was very nervous about our trees; fortunately, we had small branches blown down but nothing major. There was no sleep for me Saturday night and I stayed downstairs in case a tree fell on the house. Maybe the strength of the entire forest held up the trees. Isolated trees seemed to have more damage.

In an all electric house, it's good to have power again--warm showers, warm food, flushing toilets. Now that we have made it through Irene, I don't want to go through another one. We had a busy week with an earthquake and a hurricane just days apart. I was three times lucky--we made it through the earthquake with no damage, the hurricane wasn't devastating, and I won $150 at the casino.

I didn't take any pictures of the hurricane since I had used my memory cards to store videos of the house in case they were needed for insurance purposes.