On the Scene with Irene - Final Update
We are now under a Tropical Storm Warning as winds are supposedly still a bit strong, although it's currently calm on our street. Two of the Weather Underground stations that people have mounted on their homes just down the road from us are now not reporting anything, which makes me wonder what happened to them. The two that are still reporting post that yesterday's winds got up to 53-58 mph and we had 10" of rain which stopped sometime late last night. Irene is now about 260 miles north of us. Power went out early afternoon when I was trying to broil some burgers so ended up having to throw them away. Dang, they would have been good too - I had Texas toast instead of a bun. Electricity came back on that night so the power was out about 7 hours, which is better than the 6 days it was out during Isabel in '03, but about half the people in the area are still without. Apparently our water system was operating on generators at one point. Tides are 4' above normal and wave heights are at 7' which is higher than usual. Gene pulled the grill around to the front of the garage and made ham steaks and "baked" beans for dinner and I did dishes by hand in the dark. Most of the time I read a book or watched the wind and rain. The rest of the time we were mostly just bored. Did a walkabout around the house and confirmed the only damage was a lot of small branches and leaves down in the yard. However, the car and truck are covered with minute debris and leaves and now need a good wash. We were very lucky.