Hurricane Irene -- Early Sunday Morning Report

We went to sleep Friday night with roaring winds and sheets of rain pounding on the north side of the house. We very rarely get north winds in the summertime, but because of the counter-clockwise flow of a hurricane, and it's location to our East, all of Hurricane Irene hit the north side of the house. We have only two trees directly north of the house and they were whipping around. Since they are young trees, we don't expect them to fall. This morning the last bands of rain are west of us, we are under light rain, however the winds are still blowing and will blow all day until Irene gets over land, in New England.

Trees usually fall after hurricanes, because the huge dump of rain makes the ground too soft to hold them anymore, so we'll be watching for a day or so to see what happens, My husband just came in and reported we have tons of branches down. Hmm, I know what we'll be doing this afternoon -- dragging tree limbs to the branch pile.

So far we still have electricity. Disappointing, considering all the preparations I had made for existing without electricity for a couple of days. (I'm kidding. I'm kidding.) However, since more trees could still fall on electric lines because of the wind today, I"m not thinking we're scott free, yet. A couple of million of people are out of electricity so far on the East Coast, mostly south of us.

There was no storm surge up the Chesapeake Bay, thank goodness. No flooding from that, but stream banks are flooding over as they try to handle the runoff. I hear that Long Island is expecting a storm surge later today, however.

Preparing for hurricane Irene

We spent the day preparing for Hurricane Irene to hit Maryland's Eastern Shore.

(We live on the Western shore of the Chesapeake Bay and are predicted to only get 'Tropical winds' and rain.)

My husband repaired our leaking sunporch roof today. We are crossing fingers and toes that the repair holds under the Tropical force winds and rainstorm. I spent the day getting prepared for electrical outages -- bought more batteries, cold food, etc.

We also cleared the debris away from the storm drains in the street so that they can handle the predicted 4 to 8 inches of rain.

Children around here are hoping Irene will delay school opening on Monday, but that's not likely.

Now we wait for Irene to hit town.