Showing posts with label inchworm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label inchworm. Show all posts

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Hurricane Irene and other Natural Disasters

What a week it has been for us here. On Tuesday we experienced our first ever earthquake, fortunately without any damage. On Thursday we knew hurricane Irene was heading our way and spent several days preparing for her to come. I packed important documents, had a bag of food and water ready to go, filled water bottles and the tub with water and made sure we had batteries in all our lanterns and flashlights. I ran to the store on Friday and bought a radio.
Saturday morning we decided to head out before the storm started. We checked on my dad's house (he went up to Chris and Patti's house for the storm). Then went to eat lunch out, since we anticipated being stuck inside for a while.



After our last meal out, we took a walk down by the bay. The ducks, with a few ducklings, wandered around unfazed by the drizzling rain.








The water level was pretty low.




Here you can see the muddy bottom.





As we headed back tot he car, the rain got a lot heavier. We were drenched by the time we reached the car.








We spent most of Saturday just hanging around. The storm started slow, but it rained much of the day. Rudy went to sleep as usual, and fell asleep quickly. About half an hour after he fell asleep, our power went out. Then came back on. Then when out. Then came back on. Then went out for good. Paul and I gathered the lanterns, turned on the radio, and sat down to play cards. And then we heard the radio emergency alert- tornado warning for our town sometime in the next 20 minutes. We knew we had been on a tornado watch until 5 a.m., but we never expected to get an actual warning for our town. We got our things together, went upstairs and grabbed Rudy and a crib mattress, and headed to the basement. Rudy barely woke up to ask where we were going, then thankfully went back to sleep and slept pretty much through until morning. Paul and I decided we would just keep him in the basement for the night and so we would be staying there too. I had already said I wasn't really going to sleep, because the tornado warnings scared me. Shortly after our tornado warning expired, our power came back on and stayed on for the rest of the night.
Here is Paul set up in the basement, with Rudy fast asleep. This was actually during the power outage, you can see the lantern is lit. We are so thankful that we cleaned the basement a few weeks ago, or there would not have been enough room for the three of us to sit down there, let alone for Rudy to sleep!


Paul ended up sleeping on the couch right above the basement and I dozed off and on in the basement.
The worst of the hurricane was supposed to hit around 5 in the morning. But by morning, it seemed that the storm had passed by with no further damage. The rain continued for the morning, and the wind picked up and was very gusty for most of the afternoon, but the hurricane that was supposed to hit us really hard, fizzled out in the end, and we are very grateful!

This morning, out our front door, we could see some branches and leaves down but that was the extent of it.






When the rain stopped and the wind died down some, we took a walk. Rudy was thrilled to be outside and ran ahead of us the whole time.




















While cleaning up the yard,we found a new friend for Rudy. He had fun for about five minutes playing with this inch worm, taking it inside and letting it crawl around a rug, and then taking it back outside and letting it go on a tree.












After such an exciting week, I am hoping for some very boring months, We've had about all the weather/natural disaster -related excitement that we can handle!