Ay-yi-yIrene

Irene decided to visit us. Luckily, she was downgraded to a tropical storm right before she decided to plow through our county, north of New York City. I didn't sleep much, since she arrived in the evening and slowly meandered through overnight. It wasn't until the next day that we were able to see the result of a flash flood that went through the lot near our yard. The lot covers a catch-basin that was built to prevent erosion from a small stream that runs along the side and back of our property. I have only seen a flash flood once here, in the 10+ years we've lived in this house. When there is too much rain, flood waters can jump the roadway, dumping the water at the corner of my neighbor's fence. This is the result.


If you look closely, you can see the tomatoes still tied to the fence with their roots dangling where the dirt used to be. The dirt and rocks went that-a-way...



...into the tall grass. At least, it was tall grass. Now it's flattened grass. I imagine the force of water that can move cinder blocks and large stones and I'm just very thankful this was where the water went, rather than under our house. This was as bad as the storm got for us, except for the wind scaring the bejeebers out of me by swaying the tall trees surrounding our house. There was some incredible flooding in low lying areas the next town over. Family of our neighbors had to evacuate because of flooding, and they had raised their house five feet after damage from Hurricane Floyd several years ago. The flood waters came with a foot of their house. I'm very thankful that we came out of Irene without any major damage, and I hope all of my readers who weathered this storm are okay as well.