Safe and Sound

Well, Sandy has pretty much moved on for us and surprisingly she didn't leave much of a calling card in our yard at least...something we are very grateful for.  We had a few tree branches come down, which Mr. Tide made short order of this afternoon, and we've had some flooding which damaged our dock, but other than that we are good to go.


 

If we are experiencing this sort of flooding, then I know that other more low lying parts of our county are in dire straits.  Some parts down river from us are barely above water when the weather is calm and the tides are low.

We never even lost power, though the lights did flicker from time to time during the most ferocious of the wind gusts.  From what we've heard, the highest wind gusts got to 74 mph in our area, and we thank our lucky stars that our contractor installed our windows so well.  Having lots of windows is great for views, but when a hurricane, nor'easter, or tropical storm hits (in this case a combo of those 3), they can really be put to the test, and ours have passed with flying colors each time we've had a major storm...knock wood!

The winds were at their worst after dark, and that is always a bit unnerving to hear it howl and wonder what sort of destruction it's doing outside.  Our dock suffered a bit of damage from the winds and rising waters and some of the boards were ripped off, but we'll take that compared to what others are now facing!

This morning we ventured out early to check on the farm property and it was like a ghost town.  There were very few vehicles on the road, and most of those were power company trucks.  The farm did fine too, only a few large branches down but nothing major.

All in all, this storm was much kinder to our part of Maryland than Irene was.  We had some trees come down into the creek and one fell this afternoon on the river side, but as we drove around this morning it didn't look like a war zone as it had after Irene.

We have theorized that because Irene had so much more convective energy she likely spawned micro bursts and mini tornadoes which caused the utter devastation she left in her path last year.  And because we had drought conditions this past summer, I think a lot of the copious amounts of rain made their way into the parched soil with Sandy...all good news for us.

The coastline of Maryland didn't fare quite so well I'm afraid, and like NY, NJ, CT, MA and so many other parts of the eastern seaboard, it will take a very long time for life to return to normal for them.  My heart breaks when I see the amount of destruction they have experienced, and as a hurricane prone area, we can certainly relate to their plight.

Today has been a quiet day here, one where I even took a nap.  I think that after all of the stress of preparing, and then riding out the storm, my body just needed to re-set itself.  

We feel so very fortunate to have made it through the storm with almost no damage, and we truly appreciate the outpouring of support you gave us during the storm.  I received so many wonderful emails asking if we were ok...thank you so much!

While we wait for the waters to recede and for life to get back to normal, which it nearly is, we will think of all those facing massive clean ups and trying to contact loved ones.  I hope that sometime soon they will all be safe and sound as well!