Hurricane Irene

[cl154576]

Was anyone else affected by the hurricane?

It was weakening when it came into my area, so it did little physical damage besides knocking down trees and flooding roads, but it cut off my electricity for three days (which is why I was away from this forum).

[bestmann]

I live in Raleigh, NC, just west of the brunt of the storm. Eastern NC is getting a fair bit of wind damage, but this storm made landfall as a cat 1 storm, not a huge deal, but destructive nonetheless. Storm surge on the Outer banks and in the sounds is causing a lot of flood issues.

buy levitra online (http://www.swissrx.com) * bet on sports (http://www.bigpokerstar.com)

[AuntShecky]

She was a "tropical storm" when she hit our neck o' the woods, but she looked, smelled, and sounded like a hurricane and man, the damage she did!

The winds gusted near 60 mph, and the sustained winds weren't much lower. We're accustomed to brutal winter blizzards and we get high winds. But they seldom last 24 or more hours, such as these winds did. We get power outages in the winter too. (Notably, the blizzard of October 4, 1987 dumped snow on trees whose leaves hadn't even changed color, let alone fallen. In areas the power was out for two weeks, and some school districts were closed for that length of time, because of downed power lines on the roads.) Some people on Long Island, New Jersey, and huge parts of the Hudson River valley may be without electricity for a similar length of time after Irene.

Just in my area there were what has been called "100 year floods" but this time it was not media hype. There was an unprecedented amount of heavy, pounding rainfall. People have drowned or have lost everything. A woman in upstate NY opened her front door, stepped out on the lawn, and was swept to her death. Entire towns, bordering the Mohawk River or the Schoharie Creek have been nearly destroyed, and one town has been washed away--Windham NY (not to be confused with the county of that name in Vt, which had more than its own share of damage.) Speaking of Vermont, one of the most beautiful states in the Union, was, in my opinion, the hardest hit.

One woman on the local news said that she had formerly lived in Florida, where hurricanes are nearly a yearly event, and she says that these floods in Vermont are like nothing she's ever seen.

Down in NYC some folks are griping because parts of the city were evacuated, and the storm, at least in the boroughs themselves, was not all that destructive. Imagine what they would be saying if there had been a catastrophe! Because hurricanes are so unpredictable, no one in their path can ever take safety for granted. So in my opinion, rather than accusing officials of "crying wolf," it's better to err on the side of caution.

And this is nothing to joke about, either. There wouldn't be laughing if your mother was washed away in a flash flood, or if a tree fell on your father's car.

[Emil Miller]

A friend in New York telephoned to say that she was OK because she lived on relatively high ground, but although, according to the media, Mayor Bloomberg is being ridiculous for wanting to ban smoking in Times Square and Central Park, he was quite right to order the partial evacuation of the city.

[cl154576]

Down in NYC some folks are griping because parts of the city were evacuated, and the storm, at least in the boroughs themselves, was not all that destructive. Imagine what they would be saying if there had been a catastrophe! Because hurricanes are so unpredictable, no one in their path can ever take safety for granted. So in my opinion, rather than accusing officials of "crying wolf," it's better to err on the side of caution.

And this is nothing to joke about, either. There wouldn't be laughing if your mother was washed away in a flash flood, or if a tree fell on your father's car.

Very much. I was surprised by how heavily it hit the North. Usually where I live when a 'tropical storm' comes in there are a few flooded basements and roads, but it only lasts a day or so. Some of my neighbors still don't have electricity or running water and all of their food is going bad.