Waiting for Irene / Good-Bye Irene

SUNDAY MORNING UPDATE / 28 Aug / 0431: A long day of seemingly endless wind and rain bands that started early and ended late. Lost power on five separate occasions with the last about 1500 Saturday and when I went to bed, still no power.

Around 0330 this morning I head the dog barking and having had way too much sleep, got up with the flashlight to see what caught her attention. Lights and radio talk. Yeah!, the power company. Could not have been better timing as I had just decided about the same time I needed to go crank the generator and let the refrigerator and deep freezer run for a bit. It makes you realize how spoiled a society we are to have power at virtually the flip of a switch. I stepped out to thank the gentleman and wish him a good day. With several hundred thousand power customers out of power just locally, they have a tough and thankless job. I am sure there are those further east who will be out of power for several days.

My thoughts this morning are with the folks along the coast. They are dealing with flooding, destruction and power loss. I am thankful we only had a brush in our area versus what could have been. I remember the one that came up through our area in 1996 that caused major destruction and 10 days of no power.

Today is suppose to be beautiful and I look forward to going out for a bit of birding this morning and then it is back home to pick up limbs. I did a bit of pick up to clear the driveway yesterday but there is still several hours of work left.

SATURDAY MORNING UPDATE / 27 Aug / 0640: Just getting home from work. Locally, bands of rain started coming in late last night. The wind has continued to gradually pick up speed. The power here has blinked several times since I arrived home but is still on for now.

Further east, heavy rains are causing localized flooding, trees have started falling and several ten's of thousands are already without power.

The hurricane has weakend to a CAT 1 which is good news for all. We are still several hours away from the period of greatest impact however it appears right now we are going to make out fairly well.

Power just blinked again so I will sign out for now.

THURSDAY:
It has been a long 18 hour workday and it is back up tomorrow early. I went in to work as normal this morning and about 1430 was told I had to go back in at 1830 tonight until 0730 Friday morning.

Finally with pretty much all set until the hurricane gets closer and weather conditions deteriorate, some of us were cut loose around 2100 tonight. You can only stare at a computer screen just so long. I couldn't quite figure why so many of us were pulled in tonight with the hurricane still several hundred miles away.

The wave of tropical air that precedes the arrival of a hurricane is definitely moving in. The air feels hot and humid tonight. It is now just a wait and see what happens. Despite all the predictions weather forecasters make, a force of nature that size is still largely unpredictable.

I fully expect we will lose power at some time on Saturday but keeping my fingers crossed for a realtively easy and non-destructive storm. The rain will be welcome down east where fires have smoldered since the spring.