Hurricane Irene

I live in NYC and I braced myself for Hurricane Irene.  I did not live in an evacuation zone.  I watched the news with a fervor.  It did rain for many consecutive hours.  There were high winds.  I was worried that a tree was going to fall and knock out my neighborhood's power.  I was prepared for the storm in any event that my power was knocked out.  I was also worried my utility company was going to preemptively shut off power too.  But when I awoke on Sunday, the storm had pretty much passed.  And I discovered that when Irene made landfall on Coney Island, it was downgraded to a Tropical Storm.  We still experienced high gusts of wind until late Sunday evening.  I thanked the benevolent universe that NYC pretty much came out of it unscathed.  There were a few downed trees and property damage, but all in all, it was much better than the worst case scenario, authorities had prepared us for.  In the case of Hurricane Irene, NYC authorities decided it would be better to be as cautious and safe as possible than sorry.  We may have been too cautious, but I like being prepared for the worst possible scenario.  So we did good.

Unfortunately, the rest of NY state fared much worse than NYC.  My thoughts and prayers with all people along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States of America and countries south of America, who suffered at the hands of Hurricane Irene.  Some towns, inland NY, were wiped out due to severe flooding.  Vermont state suffered incredible flooding.  With Hurricane Irene, the problem was the flooding.  It was about 500 miles in diameter and moved approximately 15 miles per hour.  And it was dumping a lot of rain.  A ton.  So flooding was the major damaging effect of Irene.

I really didn't know what to expect from Hurricane Irene.  I had already experienced a hurricane in 2004 (Hurricane Gustav down in Florida).  That was much worse than Irene was for me.  We were stranded in Florida for about five days.

This is Hurricane season.  I think it ends in early November.  The thing is that these Hurricanes that originate south of the US usually end up being tropical storms by the time they reach NY and further north.  

However, Irene caused a great deal of damage and deaths throughout the Eastern Seaboard. You can go to the Red Cross
to donate for disaster relief.

Many areas throughout the states in the path of Irene  have been declared disaster zones.  Please keep them in your prayers and there are many ways in which you can help. NYC may have come out of this with a mild bruising, but who knows what tomorrow may bring.  Therefore, I thank the NYC authorities and NY state authorities for their vigilance and proactive measures.