60 mph?

[tsubasahome]

I was digging around the NHC's forecast advisories for Hurricane Irene from yesterday morning, when the storm passed us...since we lost power at around 7 AM, I didn't know how strong it was when it actually made it up here. I remember thinking that it must have been downgraded to a tropical storm, since the winds were strong but it's not like the house was shaking...and it turns out it was a 60 mph tropical storm? Not even a borderline hurricane? That's as strong as Hanna was when it came here in 2008!

I guess that tropical storms can do a lot of damage if you wind up on the east side of the circulation! We were getting sustained winds of around 50 mph! I'm sure there are people from Florida or the Gulf Coast who would call me a whiner for flipping out over a 60 mph tropical storm, but a storm moving as slowly as that can do a lot of damage! After all, wasn't Tropical Storm Allison retired for the amount of damage it did to Houston?

Comments

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

It's not just the windspeed that's damaging, it's the slow movement and the amazing amounts of water it dumps, flooding everything. I understand a lot of the damage in the NE is due to flooding.

[tsubasahome.livejournal.com]

Since power was off for a day, I had no idea the amount of damage done in the rest of the state, or in the rest of New England. It's pretty horrifying. I feel incredibly lucky, but also guilty.

I guess we got our power back right away because the damage wasn't so severe here. And we were under a hurricane warning and everything...the center of the storm passed closer to us than a lot of the places that were more heavily damaged!

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

Isn't that weird, that you guys had the eye near you and had less damage? Well, if you're higher with better drainage, and it's flooding that most of the problem, of course that makes sense.

[tsubasahome.livejournal.com]

Even though I only found this out by checking the NHC website, apparently Irene was starting to go extratropical Saturday night and had hurricane-force winds something ridiculous like 150 miles to the east of the center. It didn't have an eye, or much of one. It was one bizarre, lopsided storm.

I'm not sure what kind of winds everybody else got. There are towns to the north, west, and east of us that got major flooding, but we only got a few tree limbs down...it's kind of eerie. We're not near any major rivers or bodies of water. We did get very heavy rain, though.

I think some of the wind damage in eastern CT was actually caused by a tornado.