Well that was fun

I was in the reenforced glass nurses' station confirming an order when the glass rattled. Not too uncommon, as the Sunrock quarry is a mile away as the crow flies and schedules daily blasts to break up the granite there. The patients in the milieu felt it even more, and were quite startled. My wife who works a mile away felt nothing... I bet the folks at Sharon Harris did a lot more than mess up their britches! God Bless! Tony mgbbrown

Get your galloshes and bumper shoots ready!  It could be a bumpy ride.  Be safe everyone!

I was in a conference room in my office; two of my colleagues have lived in California, and knew immediately what was happening.  The told the people on the speakerphone that we had to leave because we were having an earthquake ("no, really!"), and we all headed for the emergency exits.  All of the floors in our building have windows that overlook an open atrium, and all of them were shaking; I'm surprised none of them popped out, as they have been known to do so even when unprovoked.  Aside from one person who got stuck in an elevator and had to be extricated by first-responders, everyone got out and was fine.  After about an hour, the emergency coordinators got a call over the radio that everyone could come back in to retrieve their belongings and vehicles, and then head home.  Then I overheard another radio call about someone smelling gas, so I hustled down to the garage and got the Stig family truckster out before they shut it down again.

Mrs. Stig was working from home today, and thought the whole house was coming down (I found a couple of DVD boxes that had fallen from the shelf, and a poorly-stacked pile of model car boxes fell over in the garage, but that was about it.  She had been trying to call me, but cell phones were overloaded and our ISP wend down briefly so she couldn't check e-mail.  I finally managed to get a text message out to her to let her know I was OK and heading home.

Stigette was in school; they sent the kids home early, but by the time the buses got there it was time for her school day to end anyway.  She got home fine.  Stig Jr. is with grandparents (he doesn't start school for a week); he was shaken, but he's fine.

The county just cancelled school tomorrow; still waiting to hear about my office.  Last I heard, they still had to inspect the elevators to make sure they were nor damaged.

Between this and the anticipated hurricane, I'm wondering when the locusts are going to show up!

Apparenlty we had a 4.4 aftershock just after 8:00; Mrs. Stig & Stigette felt it, but I guess I was too busy in the yard outside to notice.  They said the cat was the first to notice; she took off for the closet before they felt anything.

The earthquake and hurricane are far from me in Illinois but I hope and pray that those of you affected will remain safe and sound.

Chris

... stay safe everyone. Scary stuff.

I have to battened down    hte   hatches . On Tony 's chart I am under the 2pm sunday mark . Wife is going to to storm mode

I'm thankful none of you were hurt.  Hopefully if doesn't happen again for a long time.  Praying for you guys along the Hurricane alley.  All the best!

You guys take care and be safe.  Barry

It looks like Irene's path has shifted to the west a bit again, and it's going to hugthe coast a lot closer that it appeared yesterday.  I'm a couple of hours inland, but we're still expected to get tropical storm force winds overnight on Saturday.  Spent the evening at the grocery store, as we're out of just about everything and my regular shopping day was supposed to be Sunday.  Then I gassed up the generator, the van, and the 5-gal. gas can, figuring we're going to be without power for a while (it was 47 hours after Isabel, and we were one of the first to be restored).  At least we're still on the left side of a northbound storm, which should keep the winds down.  I've got four G.O.O.D. bags ("Get Out Of Dodge") and a crank-up radio/flashlight/phone charger arriving tomorrow.

Yikes!

The current landfall is expected tomorrow morning near Morehead City south of the Outer Banks. Raleigh is in the tropical storm wind zone, but we will have 37 miles per hour gusts and sustained 18-26 miles per hour winds and two inches of projected rainfall which we despirately need. Still-two houses to watch, an 83 year old mom, and my wife's sinus surgery this afternoon makes for one fun-filled weekend nursing let me tell you! Sandy wants me to help him prepare a car, but he says he will be hiding from the hurricane. He has a house full of sons and parents too. I may begin to restore the tan Indy Racer I got from Serge a week ago. No news from Jairus, so that is why you have not heard more details on my end. As for Isabelle-it has currently lost some steam (a Category 2 Safar-Simpson), but is packing 110 mile and hour winds and has good eyewall definition-not good. It should regain strength as it heads towards landfall over warm coastal waters. Since we are over two hundred miles out of the hurricane wind zone, the mustering involved purchasing a small Weber Little Smokey grill and some Matchlight charcoal. If things are projected to get worse, I can zip over to our house in Rougemont and nab my Husqvarna Farmer chainsaw-good for whatever the storm may bring. We may have some power outages, but I do not think they will be major and short lived. The long-range plan for our house in Rougemont is to have a free-standing generator on-the-ready. An even better plan would be to somehow encourage that monster oak tree in the front yard to somehow make its way to the roof after all of the furniture has been moved out of course, and to build a really nice hewn and dovetail style log cabin to retire in. Help me out a little bit Isabelle! Just kidding! This is a monsterous storm though and if you live outside of the strike path, consider yourself fortunate. Here is a link to all of the storm track trajectories: http://www.wral.com/weather/hurricanes/  and you can modify the view to see the full range of tracking models. This is one of the best sites I have seen on hurricane information-I think even better than NOAA for us laymen. God Bless! Tony mgbbrown

Has passed through. Got kinda gusty for a few minutes---Maybe 30-35 mph---Just a regular storm, so far.

Another big, nasty lookin band should be here any time, now. We'll see how that goes.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Irene is still two states away, but our power went out about an hour ago.  That earsplitting noise you hear behind me is the portable generator, which powers three rooms and two bathrooms (includng the refrigerator and the freezer, so the perishables won't spoil).  Fortunately our FiOS connection will keep working as long as we can get power to it, so we've got TV, internet, and WiFi to keep the kids busy.

The power still went out at the first real gust of wind, just like it did with Isabel, despite all of the aggressive tree-trimming and alleged upgrades to the power grid since Hurricane Isabel.

See you on the other side!

If your along the east coast...

this puppy is big and will affect people well inland. Everybody be safe and hope you all are not too inconvenienced. :)

We certainly have a lot to be thankful for-even though I saw some of my first horizontal rain we suffered only some leaves down despite 45 mile an hour gusts and we were 249 mile from the eye. This was the first storm to his North Carolina in the daytime in decades if I am not mistaken. Our only power outage lasted for thirty minutes around  three PM, but we did experience some light flickerings in the morning. Of course no one could sleep and we were up early and fuelled by copious amounts of coffee. We will check on our house in Rougemont tomorrow. My expectation is that it survived well and road out the storm without difficulties. I received an email from Big-T before the lights went out and he is hunkered down in Stedman and has several more hours of bad weather. Irene will be following a trough of low pressure up the East Coast and approach New England rather rapidly. I did see during the hiatus a set of HS6 rally carburetors that had fueled a good majority of my second slot car hobby revival-mounted on a 1960 MGA in Oregon and looking rather spritely if I must say so myself. I did experience a bit of remorse though, but came to my senses. After all-I am building one very trick set for the car that will be more than a show stopper and quite reliable to those trips out West to visit Serge, Sparky, and even head North to Winnipeg to see Dan! God Bless! Tony mgbbrown

How is everyone faring along the East Coast? How about popping us a quick line if you still have power! God Bless! Tony mgbbrown

The last of the rain bands is passing over right about now, then we should be in the clear.  The power miraculously came back on about 2 hours after it went out, and stayed on until midnight; it's been out since.

No damage here; all I can see are a bunch of leaves and small twigs littering the yard.  My parents didn't fare so well, though; they got a large tree limb through the roof and spent the night emptying buckets of water and cleaning things up; they have a handyman coming over today to assess the damage.

The latest update from city hall says 8000+ houses without power just within our city limits (total for the utility is nearly 500,000), at least 30 trees down across streets and a rainfall total of >5 in.

Let the recovery begin!

Start flexing those chainsaw starter-rope-pulling muscles as thirty trees will keep the city utilities out of the neighborhood. When Fran hit we lost FIFTY trees in our yard alone and were without power for three weeks. No one could even leave the neighborhood and the hook-up was performed by a crew from Maryland. The junction pole leading to the house was pulled away so CP&L would not allow electrical restoration until that was repaired. Our next door neighbor's generator gave both houses juice. We had six inces of water in our basement. I do remember throwing away a literal ton of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC magazines and lost no MGB bits. I do believe that the stress from that storm was the catalyst for my father's cancer-he was a Master Gardner and the yard was something out of SOUTHERN LIVING. We had a pile of cut wood 400 yards long and ten feet high behind our house in the power line right-of-way. Believe it or not it is gone now. The yard has opened up and looks even better for it. It is amazing how things rebound! SORRY to hear about your parents-we had a tree on the corner of the house and as long as it did not break any roof joists you should be fine. Everyone down here vented their roofline after Fran. God Bless! Tony mgbbrown

Lots of issues with trees & power across the state.  We were fine here in Towson.  Lots of wind left, so trees could still be an issue.  I'm waiting for a report from my sister.  She was evacuated from Ocean City, MD on Thursday.  I expect that they will let them back this afternoon.

Just Got Back from NMB...

Things there are not too bad actually. Just a few trees blown down, some vinyl siding blown off and just a few shingles blown away. Not too bad considering.  :)

Big-T; How was the seafood? Murrell's Inlet was the place to be I am sure! Lee's Inland Kitchen has been the place to eat for decades. Glad to hear that things were OK! God Bless! Tony mgbbrown

Still no power here at Casa della Chaos; schools are closed, so Mrs. Stig and I are home babysitting the kids and the generator.  Bucket trucks have been spotted in the area, so I remain hopeful, and the city had all of the downed trees out of the way first thing yesterday morning.  I have been getting 12-13 hours worth of power out of what should be a 10-hour tank of gas in my generator, though.

You should be able to finish the race on that.  You might need to stick with t-jets instead of A/FX while on the generator!   Be Safe!

Our power at home just went down, I assume to allow for repair at the sub-station level.  It should not be out for long.

Good news from Ocaen City, MD.  My sister's house was OK.  No flooding in their neighborhood, just lots of rain.

Our prayers go out to everyone struggling with these issues, and to everyone working to help!

Joe