fourteenth

Fourteen scenes from Hurricane Irene:

The rain starts to softly fall on Saturday morning...



We take a leisurely stroll to survey the situation ...



The winds pick up...



It's a team effort to hold an umbrella down ...



We're one umbrella short ...



Luckily, we've got just enough coverage for two children and one bunny.



We return to the house just in time to see a tree fall down in our backyard. It was dead and needed to come down and since it fell away from the house ... Win! Win!



Thank you, Irene!

Our neighbors didn't fare so well ... this is the very much alive tree that fell across our creek.



And in the distance ... white water!



This has to be at least what ... Class 2?



There were leaves and branches all over the yard and driveway...





Which is great for us since we've been stockpiling wood and kindling for our backyard bonfires from fallen branches.



Hurricane Irene was my third hurricane experience, and in comparison to the first two, it wasn't much more than a heavy rain with some moderate wind. I know that this hurricane packed more of a punch to other areas, so we got off lucky.

When you consider...

My first hurricane experience was the category 5 Hurricane Hugo which hit South Carolina in 1989, during my freshman year in college. Hugo was still a category 2 when it blew across my campus, four hours inland. I'd just finished watching a Monty Python marathon with my best friend, Amy, and I remember walking back to the all-girls dorm with winds so strong that we tried to lean forward and couldn't through the force. By 2 AM, three hours past curfew, we were evacuated from our rooms and sat in the hallways - with what I noticed to be SCORES of boys (many in boxer shorts) who should have been in their own dorms. There's no question those boys had done a quick assessment and recognized that the risk of life or limb was greater if they ventured out in the storm, then if they'd stayed inside and took their chances with the House Mother.

I'll never forget when the eye of the storm passed over us and everything was deathly still. And then, another 10 minutes later, the winds picked up again and it felt like the building was going to collapse. When daylight broke, we saw that massive trees had been uprooted and moved about like toothpicks, roofs had been peeled off buildings, and windows were shattered. We were without electricity for almost a week.

My second hurricane experience was the category 2 Hurricane Bob which hit Boston in 1991. I was visiting Massachusetts enroute to California for my semester exchange when the news came that a hurricane was barreling up the eastern seaboard.

My father had a 50-foot boat at the Charles River Yacht Club at the time and he thought it would be a good idea to go down to the boat and take it out to the middle of the river and throw an anchor so it could swing around, freely. Otherwise, he was afraid that the tidal flux would knock the boat up against the dock and puncture the hull which would then cause the boat to sink and drag the whole dock down with it. My older sister Beth, convinced me to go with him because she didn't want for him to be alone on a boat, on the water, in the middle of a hurricane.

It's a shame, I always though she liked me?

The kids have had a great time this past week, what with an earthquake and a hurricane.



Who knows, maybe next week, there will be locusts!