<p>Ike is now a category four hurricane. Josephine is now defunct.</p>
<p>Well, Hanna’s raining hard now . . . . Very very hard. Hope I don’t lose power, as DH is up in NH with S2. Home alone in the dark with the dogs is not where I want to be. </p>
<p>But I agree: The NorthEast has snow and ice, but not earthquakes or tornados. Snow and ice are hard to drive in, so I usually just wait a day and they’re gone. It’s not so bad.</p>
<p>VeryHappy, we seem to lose power when a squirrel farts in a neighboring county, and except for some short blips this afternoon, ours has been okay. Hope the same is true for y</p>
<p>Hanna is here … mid Fairfield County CT … pouring rain, thunder, windy. I’ve been out to the market and made sure I have candles and matches!</p>
<p>owlice-
I love your sense of humor!</p>
<p>Right now Tulane’s website says something like" welcoming back students and watching the Gulf". I don’t like this very much…</p>
<p>Hope you northerners don’t get too much rain. I never understood why these storms don’t run outta water. Any meteorologists out there??</p>
<p>Yes, Ike is now looking better for us (South Florida) and very ominous for NOLA!</p>
<p>OOh, Owlice, I would love an amaretto cookie! (must look up that recipe.)</p>
<p>eye has passed over us, leak finally stopped. H will be up on the roof tomorrow. Oh well, could be worse! I like water…:)</p>
<p>Owlice,
The squirrels seem to have no digestive problems here today…haven’t even had a blink in the power, and it is looking like Hanna is finished. The dog is willing to go on a walk with S2 and GF, which tells me the barometric pressure isn’t dropping any longer. All is well.</p>
<p>Roof has held – replaced it two years ago after repairs never quite took. Sung and dry ever since, thank goodness.</p>
<p>We do get tornados in Detroit. And flooding and severe summer thunderstorms.</p>
<p>Cross DEtroit off the list…</p>
<p>"My S is looking at the northeast, and it seems like the effects of hurricanes can be felt even that far north. Is there no safe place any more? "</p>
<p>We may have hurricanes and their remnants but there hasn’t been anything like what the southeast goes through on a regular basis. Tonight we have heavy rain and a little wind. We do have a flood warning for our town until tomorrow morning. But northern New England is usually remarkably disaster-free unless you consider snowstorms disasters.</p>
<p>Come on guys, much better to be able to see it coming and get out of the way, vs waiting for an earthquake. Tulane and NOLA are having a bad year, and LSU got hit badly by Gustav, but the rest of the South is good. Tornadoes, eh, scary, but pretty good odds.
We are watching Ike carefully, this may not be good.</p>
<p>OK… never thought I’d be saying this about D2 at college in Allentown, but they’ve evidently had a tornado there with quite a bit of destruction, from Hanna. </p>
<p>AND MY DAUGHTER WON’T ANSWER HER PHONE! I don’t like this.</p>
<p>OH, dang, really? My sis lives in Allentown (a couple blocks from Muhlenburg). I’m calling now.</p>
<p>ahhh… she called me back. Of course, being down in a room (with no windows, etc.) within the performing arts center having auditions, they had no idea there was a tornado, until they all got done with their meeting and turned on their phones, with messages from their parents.</p>
<p>All OK at Muhlenberg. Sounds like the tornado touched down east of river.</p>
<p>Garland, your sister probably lives in a house that I would kill to have… all those houses within a couple of blocks of the 'Berg are awesome! I drool driving past them.</p>
<p>Nah, she lives in a rowhouse across from the fairgrounds, just one block from the city city area, where all the hospitals and everything are. Not the houses you’re thinking of.</p>
<p>I woke her up (she took a nap cuz they lost electricity earlier). Has no info about any tornado. I guess it wasn’t too close.</p>
<p>We are at Hilton Head this week. Hanna came through yesterday, Friday, in the afternoon. Intermittent rain, occasionally heavy. There was no noticeable wind by the time I went to bed on Friday night about 11:30. Today, Saturday, was beautiful. Cloudless. The ocean was very quiet. Earlier in the week it was quite rough, and there is still a lot of sea grass washed up on the beach probably from Tropical Storm Faye.</p>
<p>HHI is great. In a few years we might buy a place here to escape the Wisconsin winters if we decide to stay there when we retire from our retirement jobs.</p>
<p>It’s expected here in several hours. There has been flooding in Manchester NH in the police and fire stations. Basement flooding here and there and a few small power outages. Lots of flash-flooding warnings. Winds are expected at 55 MPH so we’ll hear them if we’re awake at the time.</p>
<p>We’re doing a little power-outage prep in case we lose it overnight.</p>
<p>Glad to hear all kids/others are safe after tornadoes.</p>
<p>:: passes garland 18 cookies ::</p>
<p>Oh, you’ll want them all, believe me! Maybe not all tonight; you might want to save some for breakfast. The recipe is on the “High School Class of 2011/College Class…” thread, second to last page, courtesy of SlithyTove, and wow… good stuff!</p>
<p>jym, thanks! And they don’t run out of water because they get it from the ocean; the spin brings the moisture in. </p>
<p>CountingDown, I’m glad the squirrels are feeling okay! 
We’ve had a couple of blips with the internet tonight – one of them made H leave his office in disgust. He came downstairs, threw himself on a sofa, and ended up watching the rest of “Catch Me If You Can” with me. (Ate some cookies, too.)</p>
<p>~~~</p>
<p>Places in the Virginia 'burbs got almost 8 inches of rain; we got much less, with only over three by a bit. Lots of flooding, some roads washed out. Really cool sunset tonight, with the sun (yes, we had sun!) turning clouds green.</p>
<p>We were on our way out tongiht and the last bad of the front split the sky. The other side was a gorgeous blue, with low-lying clouds beyond picking up a million shades of red and orange.</p>
<p>Yeah for H joining you on the sofa! Always a better deal than working…</p>
<p>The dog rode with me to pick up S2 this AM and was perfectly content to snooze in the back of the car, pounding rain and all, but bring her in the house, where it’s much quieter and she freaks out. We always know hours before it rains – she can tell the changes in pressure or something. Late yesterday afternoon (before the rain began) she stood in the carport with her hound nose sniffing away – she probably can smell the rain before we can, too.</p>