Tuesday, October 30, 2012

We're well, dry and safe

Hi all. I know this big East Coast storm called Sandy — now a post-tropical depression — made big national news and I want to let you know that in Lancaster County we definitely dodged the worst part of the storm.

We feel very fortunate to not have had very severe weather here. While Sandy didn't live up the hype here, it sure did elsewhere, especially in New Jersey which took the brunt of the storm and New York City which experienced very high surges and flooding.

We've had 3.25" rain from Sunday until now (Tues. morn). There where some significant wind gusts but nothing very sustained. We have some branches down and lots of leaves but I don't see any trees down in our neighborhood. Bottom line: This storm wasn't nearly as problematic for us as hurricane Irene which hammered us with 6+" rain in August 2011. Then we had water in the basement and had to pull out a carpet to dry. I also lost an element from my TV antenna when a trip branch was blown so hard it whipped over the house and snagged the antenna. Ironically, for us, Irene which had much less hype caused more flooding and damage locally than Sandy, which emptied store shelves of bread, water, candles, batteries, flashlights, generators, etc.

We haven't had any electrical outages thus far, although the lights where dimming intermittently last night when I went to bed which made me think there still could be a power failure.

The "eye" of the storm fka Hurricane Sandy passed by us (about 30+/- miles south of Akron) around midnight last night. Today it is brisk and cool with a continuing light drizzle and winds out of the south at 8 mph.

The MCC office was closed yesterday but is open today and Barb is back to work. My workplace, Smilebuilderz, closed at noon yesterday and announced it will be closed today as are many schools, libraries, etc. I am trying to find out if I could go in this afternoon and work for a few hours, but no response yet.

A young woman, named Boyanna, living in our upstairs apartment is from Serbia and she was extremely frightened by the storm scenarios portrayed on the telly and internet. She told us Europe doesn't get these kinds of storms and she lived there during the Yugoslav Wars and she said she wasn't as terrified by the threat of bombings as by this pending storm!! Ahh, the power of "First Warning", "Storm Team", "Stormtracker", etc. continuous TV broadcasts. We tried to console her that we are inland about 125 miles from the coast and the storm should be weakened significantly by the time it reaches us. We also offered she could hunker down in our end of the basement if it would help her feel safer.

We feel lucky to be well, dry and safe.




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