I am glad everyone is fine so far.. Was worried it was going to become something disaster movies are made of.
As much as I understand the risk of major storms, it really can be disappointing when they don't live up to the hype.
Thanks for your concern! The media is somewhat to blame for over-hyping this. WCBS is still devoting their broadcast fully to Irene. Though it's still really windy down here in NY - hope I make it through with power intact.
I... well, it passed by me with little incident. I'm amused at the semi-panicked state that I've been in for the past two days because of this storm [I wasn't in the direct path, to be fair, but we've had worse thunderstorms]. I've also concluded that everyone in my area is a sissy.
I was never panicking. I concluded it was going to be crappy weather and it was crappy weather. The only reason it sucked is because I had to go outside in it. Otherwise, everything was pretty good.
I think the worst may be over already. I kind of expected it to peak around 4pm and then slowly diminish, but it hasn't really rained to speak of in a couple of hours and the wind seemed to start diminishing around 3pm, though it's still doing some serious gusting. A couple of hours ago, I was sitting here looking out the window when the tree next to my house came crashing towards me. It didn't come within six feet of the window, but it was an exciting moment, let me tell you. A little while later, another tree came down in the parking lot on the other side of the supermarket entrance, right next to my car. That one was blocking the road, so they've carved it up already. I don't know how much damage there is overall locally, because I haven't left the house since 6oclock this morning, but there have been tons of sirens out there; cop cars, fire engines, ambulances, and unmarked vehicles. No flooding here, though, so my car would have been safe even if had forgotten to move it. We never lost power or cable, though the lights flickered a few times. I thought we lost a couple of the security cameras a few times-- once they blacked out for almost an hour-- but they're online and steady now. It was a pretty exciting day, though.
I'm glad most of you seem to have come out of it with minor damage - hype or no it never hurts to be prepared. I'd love to hear from Randi and CoolEddie, though.
Nothing too bad up here in Maine. Some somewhat heavy rain overnight and some higher-than-normal wind, and the lights have flickered a couple of times, but other than that things seem to be fine.
Friend of mine sent a picture of a tree down in his neighborhood on the West Side of Manhattan. Must have been rough.
Its still gusting pretty hard right now but we never lost power. The BEST part of Irene blowing through is that it has replaced that oppressive, soupy humidity with extremely crisp cool air!!! Also, only one large Ash branch snapped to the ground and it was actually a branch we thought about cutting down anyway
My Mom's hometown got nailed pretty badly. [yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpSuX7j4-a8&feature=player_embedded[/yt] My Grandpa has a house there (he's living with my uncle for the duration of his chemotherapy, so he's not) and it's probably flooded.
I'm at the top of a hill, so I got very lucky; the rest of the borough where I live, at the bottom of the hill, got flooded. Lost power for 22 hours because a tree took out the lines, but everything's good. I apparently slept through a tornado watch last night.
The hurricane was nothing the flooding is horrible. In western mass there is an old bridge they have flowers on now called. Bridge of flowers. Its underwater. I need to take a train back home and they are canceled because of the storm's flooding.
How's NYC? I heard from the skullcowboy through twitter that he's alright, although his house took some damage from a flying tree limb. ... Didn't know they had trees in NYC.
What a wussy storm...prob had 45mph winds here. Barrier islands had flooding though. People who fled from here to the west and north had worse rain, wind and lost power. We never lost power. I had to laugh at them. RAMA
Bit of rain, moderate winds. Never lost power here in Fairfax, VA. The flooding in Vermont sounds dreadful, though. My family's home is OK but part of the road to it is washed out. It's likely the basement of our rental property is flooded (that basement had a tendency to get wet anyway).
My power just came back on after being out since 11:00am yesterday. For those who think the media was over-doing the coverage: 7.5 million homes were without power after this storm. Many people will remain without power for as much as a week, and that's not even considering all the flooding. It's easy to say that it's just hype when you don't experience any of those problems.