. I've been up for about an hour.
I was comfortably entering that half sleep stage and remember that Waldo was getting himself ensconced around my head on the pillow, when a clap of thunder stopped his purring and he jumped off the bed.
The thunder signaled the official arrival of Hurricane Irene, although it had been raining steadily all of Saturday.
I had checked in earlier with my dad and his girlfriend, and K. had told me that Ocean Gate, NJ was now under a mandatory evacuation and luckily, my dad agreed to go to K.'s for the night. My dad is just a two-block walk from the Tom's River, near where the river feeds into the Atlantic. He's very exposed; it's completely flat where he lives.
So my dad and his cat made it the 8 miles over to K.'s house in the town of Tom's River, which is a bi further inland, is not on the water and has had no mandatory evacuation. There they will join K. and her three pets. They're expecting winds of 60 to 80 mph.
Here in Connecticut, they're forecasting 45 to 65 mph winds with gusts to 75. It's been raining very, very hard and I just keep hoping no trees will land on the house or the wires. Remember, I just got my nice new vinyl siding. An outage in this kind of storm would likely last for many days with so many others out of power. There's a lot of food in my fridge and freezer. So far, as you can see, we still have power.
The bad weather will continue into Sunday and I think lessen in late afternoon/evening. I'll be relieved when daylight comes. Things always seem worse in the dark.
2:58 a.m. We're getting a lashing from irene
August 28th, 2011 at 08:09 am
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