Checking in after Irene.

I guess it was Tropical Storm Irene, huh?

We lost power at around 7 AM yesterday. Just got it back about 20 minutes ago. No damage to the house, very, very minor damage to the yard. Lucas was a total nightmare in the hurricane bunker. I'm glad this is over! It's too bad the raspberries got smushed, but I'll just have to wait for the next round to ripen!

60 mph?

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?