My First Hurricane

When you live in a region for most of your life, you come to expect certain weather patterns.  For me, that would be blizzards in the winter, rain and tornadoes in the spring, heat and humidity in the summer, and a generally pleasant fall.

Notice the omission of hurricanes?

I do not ever remember a night like we had on Monday.  Sure, we've had the residual rains from far away hurricanes.  It's been raining since last Friday.  I've survived my share of floods.  What I've never experienced is 70-80 MPH winds that last 12 hours.  Nothing like cowering in your own home, waiting for the roof and siding to blow off.  How do people put up with this on a yearly basis?

We were very fortunate here.  All we lost was a good night's sleep and a large butterfly bush.  The cement blocks on one wall in the basement had some damp spots, but that was it.  EXTREMELY grateful and relieved to know that we bought a solid house. Also, feel EXTREMELY fortunate that we did not sustain a power outage.  I have two friends who are still without power, since Monday at 10 pm.  School was canceled on Tuesday (there goes one of our five 'snow' days), and many businesses and roads were closed due to power outage and trees on downed wires.  Fifty percent of our community lost power, with 250,000 people in the region without power.

Our power went on and off approximately 50 times between Monday night and Tuesday early morning.  And each time, our doorbell rang.  Creepy, huh?  I hope that those in unaffected areas had a fun Halloween last night.  Ours is postponed until Sunday, when hopefully we will have picked up the one million sticks and branches on the driveway and sidewalk, so as to not have liability issues for trick-or-treaters in the dark.