<p>Can’t watch the endless loop of hurricane reporting anymore [tongue-tied rain-soaked TV reporters, nitwit surfers and fool dog walkers], so I need some comic relief.</p>
<p>Yesterday afternoon a neighbor said that when her husband ran out for a trip to the local supermarket, it took him forty minutes to get a parking stall.</p>
<p>High tempers and name-calling while fighting over empty shelves in the hunt for bottled water.</p>
<p>And of course, there was the fellow I passed on his way out of the market with his toddler son in tow and a case of Coors Light in his arms. He flashed a broad smile and told me that he was now fully prepared for the worst.</p>
<p>Well, it’s not a funny story but is ironic. We brought my daughter back to school in Maryland ahead of time to avoid the storm. The drive usually takes us anywhere from nine hours to eleven hours (mapquest says 8). We are always sitting in traffic, construction, etc.</p>
<p>Yesterday we made it home in 8 hours! We flew through New York and New Jersey. It was us, a lot of utility trucks and a few other brave souls.</p>
<p>I guess we should plan our trips there around natural disasters.</p>
<p>Well, we were parking our cars in our front field to avoid trees near the driveway by the house falling on them. We got two cars parked in there and had one to go. The opening to the field is about 12-15 feet wide with a small tree at each side. We were backing the vehicles in so it would be easier to get out later. Hubby is driving. Starts to back in the opening and I was going to remind him of the metal post that sticks out a little about 6" off the ground. But I didn’t. Wish I had. We hear a whooooooooosh. I said “that can’t be good”. Yup, punctured the side wall of the tire. It was raining quite hard, so we took the car back up to the house and he had to change the tire. </p>
<p>Not a minute after I park the newly-tire-changed car in the field and start walking up to the house, my cell rings. Son (who is 1 1/2 hours away and on his way home) calls to say his truck won’t shift out of second gear. Sigh. Can’t drive that far in second gear! So we discuss options. He was able to pull over and jiggled the gear shift lever. Turns out it said it was in drive, but it was actually in second. He played with it until it went into drive and arrived home safely. </p>
<p>DH spent Friday putting away the deck furniture, cleaning out the carport, tending the garden, cutting the grass and generally cleaning up everything outside the house so nothing woudl fly around in the storm. We got some heavy rain. But I got a great fall cleanup :)</p>
<p>Floridians will now have to listen to their northern friends tell them about how they survived big, bad Hurricane Irene and how it blew over their garbage cans and messed up things so bad. Down in Florida hurricanes mean having half your roof blow away and having alligators, sharks, palm trees, and telephone poles end up swimming in your living room. I’m glad for everyone though that Irene apparently is not going to be too property damaging or life endangering, but more so just an inconvenience.</p>
<p>On bottled water - I recommend an undersink or portable water filtration system (like Brita). You just need clean, empty gallon water bottles before a storm.</p>
<p>-snort- that wasn’t much of an earthquake, nor a hurricane if i read reports right.</p>
<p>Back when i lived in montana, we used to get earthquakes all the time, ones that could be felt that is (really it just felt like a train went by our house, as we used to live near a set of tracks).</p>
<p>Hurricanes can be bad yes (i’ve delt with them from andrew to a few unremembered ones), but if they don’t hit directly, there isn’t much damage to be had. Most of the time it was an over glorified rainstorm (mind you as i say this i remember the night when one caused a big tree in our back yard to come crashing down).</p>
<p>^my area has had 2 earthquakes this week (the big one on Tuesday and a local one yesterday) as well as the hurricane, and there’s a dam nearby that has been checked for stability a few times in the past 24 hours. Looks like it’s going to hold strong though!</p>
<p>I dutifully followed recommendations and went out to the deck to move the furniture into the garage. When I lifted the cover on the table so I could pull out the chairs, I was attacked by a mob of angry bees that had made a nest in the base of the table! Got stung in 3 places, and hightailed it back inside, figuring that if the furniture ended up in the next county, it was okay with me. In the end, Irene didn’t budge the deck furniture one inch (though two big trees came down). Not sure whether I call the tree removal guys or the exterminator next…</p>
<p>icedragon - guess you never had your house washed out to sea by a hurricane. </p>
<p>And when was the last time Vermont small towns were cut off from the rest of the world by hurricane flooding? I’ve lived in Florida for 15 years, going thru back to back hurricanes in 2004. Not something I would wish on anyone.</p>
<p>I was in one of the museums in DC when the quake hit, and the entire stairway started moving. Very scary when you have no idea what’s happening.</p>
<p>icedragon, your post is very insensitive. You DO NOT need a direct hit to have extensive property damage and stress happen. All the best to those struggling with the aftermath of Irene.</p>
<p>Icedragon, intriguingly, you are actually right, it was a mild hurricane, as hurricanes go. One sister lives right where it made landfall in NJ–and she’s fine, one small tree gone, no damage, basement unflooded. But… the people in Vermont are in deep water, quite literally, after eleven or more inches of rain in a very short time, following heavy rains for much of August. Normally, by the time a storm is that far inland, it’s not a big deal. Parts of NY are also underwater. Another sister has no power, flooded basement, trees down in her backyard (that luckily missed the house and the car)–and the power company doesn’t know when they’ll get power restored: “It could be weeks.” Her son is trapped in his house by a fallen tree that missed his truck by inches.</p>
<p>I hope Floridians etc have gotten over their chuckles by now. This is a serious event, killing quite a few people, destroying hundreds, maybe thousands of homes, not to mention businesses, farms, etc. It looks less and less funny every time I read or hear the latest news.</p>
<p>BunsenBurner,Of course, it is important to keep a sense of humor in life. I am not chuckling, however, about having over $10,000 in damage to my crawlspace in Virginia. I am certainly not chuckling over “big,bad Irene” leaving so much destruction in Vermont and New Jersey and other places. All the best to those dealing with the aftermath of Irene.</p>
<p>Of course my kid (the weather magnet) was flying on hurricane weekend. Of course. Major snow/ice storm? She’s in the air. Hurricane weekend? Why not? School started Tuesday. She made it back to New Haven Monday evening to find water damage in her umpteenth floor apartment . Ruined some hardwood floors. We are very thankful it wasn’t worse.</p>
<p>lizard said: “I’m glad for everyone though that Irene apparently is not going to be too property damaging or life endangering, but more so just an inconvenience.”</p>
<p>40 dead and cliimbing, and property damage among the top 10 in the US</p>