My First Hurricane a Picture Essay by Sockbug

Yesterday, about noon, power was resumed to Chez Sockbug.  There was much happy dancing and gingerly turning on of the appliances.  Screw that now, all computers are on, the A/C is cranked to the max, we'd have the TV on if the Dish was pointed correctly, each Chez resident is on their own computer, using those kilowatts to make up for lost time.

This is all it all came down...

Friday night, awesome clouds...

We decided to crash about 10ish that night, since we thought it would be fairly sleepless.  Silly us.  We should have taken in all The Weather Channel there was to offer!  The first time I was awakened was about 2:30.  Thought I'd go take a turn about the house and see what was up.  Wind was blowing heavily from the east.  Power still on.  I was awakened at 2:48PM when I heard the bang of the transformer extinguishing our power.  (The damned analog clock in the kitchen proclaimed "2:48" for NINE DAYS AND EIGHT HOURS!!  That's how I knew exactly what time it was when the power went off.)  Back to sleep for awhile, what else is there to do?   

Awakened again and the wind was really howling from the north this time.  Incredibly dark, so all there was to see was the stupid little stick pine trees (see photo above) whipping around like crazy.  If we knew then what we know now, Daughter the Younger wouldn't have been sleeping under the shadow of several of those trees all night.

The last time I woke up was 5ish.  Wind was blowing from the west.  Gully (drainage ditch) behind our house was filling up.  Could start to see that it wasn't quite as non-eventful as we'd thought, the neighbor across the street had a pine tree down on his roof, I could see that a few other trees on the horizon were missing as well.

It rained most of the day on Saturday, but we ventured out to see how Howdy's shop fared.  No traffic lights on anywhere.  The fire department had been around town, clearing one lane on most of the major roadways.  Here was a tree they left until later:

You had to drive under this one to get through.

The major waterway in the area, Cypress Creek was flooded enough that the storm sewers that normally back up into it were providing relief valves for the overflooded waterway...

 This is one of the other gullies that was headed for Cypress Creek...

Later on Saturday, when it was only "sprinkling", we headed out for a walk around the neighborhood.  How'd you like to be this guy?  Two cars in the driveway *and* the house, all creamed by the seemingly innocuous pine trees in the yard...

The next day, we determined the scope of our own damage...about five sections of useless fence taken out at the posts and a neighbors tree precariously hanging over our bedroom.  Here's a shot of the fearless guy putting the chains on the tree so the crane could pull it safely out of the way after he cut the base of it.  Amazing to watch...mine is the house on the right that the tree is hanging over...

In my next post, I'll have some survival strategies for coping with a hurricane in your area!