Day after Irene
The day after Hurricane Irene's passage through North Carolina and Virginia beach didn't really have much impact on our location. And that makes me feel like we were very lucky.
Much like Isabel in 2003, most of the wind and rain from Irene was west of here. We didn't see any flooding. There does not appear to be a lot of debris or fallen trees in our area. For large parts of the day yesterday, the radar showed our location in a little bubble that didn't have the that was seen further west. And being our neighborhood sits a little higher than most of the surrounding area, and we're further back from both the Atlantic and the bay, we didn't have to worry about storm surge or other flooding as much as other areas closer to the ocean or bay.
Thanks to some work that was done on the house in the spring and early summer, the only physical problem we ran into was the dining room window leaking when the winds shifted as the eye made its way furhter north.
I've spent part of today trying to get information about how frinds and family in Bristol, PA and the surrounding area weathered the storm. I've gathered that Bristol is STILL without power, with almost everyone losing power sometime last night, while the eye of Isabel was still in the Hampton Roads area.
[I just spoke with my Dad, and they have power back, working on getting cable back now. Power was out there from between 2100 and 2200, back on at some point and then out again starting around 0230 today.]
Earlier today, I reread the posts I had published for the passage of Hurricane Isabel in September 2003. I thought it might be interesting to compare my memories of the two storms.
| Isabel | Irene | |
|---|---|---|
| Power | We lost power as soon as the wind started, and it stayed out for 3 days. Backup battery lasted about 2 hours total. | Lost power 11 times, but never for more than half an hour at a shot. If the backup battery still worked, I wouldn't have lost netowkr. (really do need to replace that battery |
| Wind | Widespread damage in the area. Trees knocked down. Debris in the road. We could feel the wind through the walls | We did't see much of anything as far as downed trees. One branch and a leaky window. The house shook a bit at times |
| Flooding | Lots of flodding almost everyone. | We haven't seen any flooding, but other areas DID flood. Anything near the ocean and bay |
| Water Damage | West of here, houses falling into rivers | We haven't heard any of that, yet |
| Other Areas | West of here bad flooding and erosion (see: houses falling into rivers) | Bristol w/o power. NYC getting "major storm" prep going |
The comparisons could go on. But the point I want to make is that WE didn't have much along the lines of problems caused by Irene, where Isabel felt like a small scale disaster that took weeks to clean up.
Another big difference between the storms was how we communicated before, during and after the storms were here.
For Isabel, once the power went out, we were pretty much done. We didn't have anyone we could really text, becaues the explosion of text messaging didn't reach most of the people we knew till about a year or two later. I couldn't get to this site to post anything while the power was out unless I went to the office. Facebook was still a year away, and wouldn't be public for another two years. Twitter was still 3 years away.
This left voice chat over the phone and cell phone (not yet really the mobile network), and that network was seriously damaged.
Last night, I talked to my parents using Skype. I talked to my sister, brother and some friends via SMS and Twitter and Facebook. Last night and today, we're getting messages from people via Twitter and Facebook that their power is out, still out, and coming back on.
I don't even know how much of this would have been possible in 2003.
