Come on Irene

Calm down, calm down. It's OK. Hurricane Irene has passed and I'm still alive. You can relax.

I didn't think the storm warnings were that severe for our area, but just to be safe we picked up some supplies Friday. We needed to be able to feed ourselves if the power went out. There were a lot of people at the two Giant grocery stores I went to, but they were all fairly patient and polite and almost nobody was completely filling their shopping carts. The shelves were still well stocked so long as you didn't need any candles. Yummy reported that Walmart was a different story. She says it was chaos.

Friday was storm free, but you could feel an oppressive humidity and what felt like higher than normal air pressure. Like we were being pressed between the oncoming storm and the one that passed the day before.

The rain started Saturday afternoon. As it got on toward evening the wind picked up but weren't yet putting on a real show. Partially because all the three story buildings were blocking the wind so life at street level wasn't bad. Above the roofs there were branches flailing around. On the sidewalk people were walking with umbrellas without a struggle. Around midnight things really started to get nuts. The tree in the neighbor's yard would bend way over and snap back. Street lamps wiggled. Out back we could see more trees waving back and forth furiously. Down in the alley the splashing of the rain formed a mist that obscured things nicely. The walking path between Yummy's house and the one to the north flooded. It has drainage, but not fast enough for what was falling into it. The storm seemed to have peaked around 4:00 in the morning.

Here's some pictures from the walk we took Sunday after the storm.

This tree used to be outside Yummy's window. It fell straight south, missing the houses and the cars. 

A better view of the tree in Yummy's neighbor's yard.

The city had this road blocked off, much to the annoyance to the cars behind me who wanted to get through.

Same limbs with the tree it came from in the back. 

The storm was kinda disappointing. We didn't lose power or end up with a good story other than the lucky falling of the tree next door. I won't be getting it on DVD.