After Irene

[Remmy122]

Well in this area we were very fortunate with what Irene has left us. The first victim of the storm was killed about 20 miles away, hit by a falling limb while feeding some animals I believe.

Im on my way to cut down 2 dogwoods at church that didnt make it, and then meeting with some people to cut a tree of an elderly couple that attends our church's car. They a super nice couple who have been hit with some really tough luck lately, but man is their faith alive!

Theres more wood around here than I could haul in 3 weeks with out sleep or work. Going to get it while the gettings good.

How did every one else fair out with the storm?

 

[NH_Wood]

So far so good - much more mild that anticipated - I see no large limbs or trees down anywhere - no power outage, etc. Looks like I'll not have too much wood to scrounge, but haven't left the house yet. A few more hours of wind/rain and we'll be in the clear. Glad you didn't get hit too hard! Glad you were able to help some folks out. Cheers!

 

[n3pro]

Not bad here, gust of 47, 2.45 inches of rain so nothing more then a severe thunderstorm. A few trees down but not too bad. The only death that I know of so far is this idiot, WTH would you be camping in a tent during a hurricane.

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/08/harrisburg_man_killed_in_hurri.html

 

[Stump_Branch]

Good to here remmy your making it alright with some wood. Still no power here. Did manage a trailer load of oak from the side of the road. No need to even break out the saw. Wood scrougers dream weather now, downed limbs and sunny 70 degrees

 

[PA. Woodsman]

5 inches of rain and power out for 15 hours but that's nothing compared to people with major damage or loss of life. I hope all are safe...

 

[wood-fan-atic]

Helped some neighbors limb some fallen trees - then went out scrounging. Lots of downed trees - some tree-related car and property damage, but no injuries that I know of. LOTS of scrounging to do 'round these parts (central Nassau county, L.I.)

 

[711mhw]

Over 3 1/2" of rain and the only trees that I had blow down (that I've seen yet) are Hemlock. Did hava one puny Hornbeam and a small Beech. Gotta check the the back 700 tomorow.

 

[fabsroman]

Good to here remmy your making it alright with some wood. Still no power here. Did manage a trailer load of oak from the side of the road. No need to even break out the saw. Wood scrougers dream weather now, downed limbs and sunny 70 degrees

Don't know where in Maryland you are, but I have been without power in western Howard County since 4:00 last night. took a drive around the area and they still have no removed a huge tree that is on the power lines down the road and they have another section of Frederck Road entirely closed off while they remove trees. I figured I had the least chance of being without power compared to my parents, brother, and sister that live in Montgomery County, and they all have power.

I am typing this on my laptop while listening to the generator outside. Spent the entire day scrounging a generator and hooking it up to the well pump and other things we need. Had to wire it directly to the well pump line because I could not find a plug adapter at 2 Home Depots, a Lowes, and an Ace Hardware. Note to self, buy a good generator, plenty of extension cords, and 220 adapters should this ever happen again. Utterly insane. Now, I am hoping that I can get on my desktop and actually get some billable hours done before I go to bed.

Saw some downed trees while driving around, but scrounging wood was the least of my worries this morning. Just getting breakfast for the family was hard enough because most stores were out of power and when we found a Dunkin Donuts with power it was entirely out of donuts, but we were able to buy the last 4 bagels they had.

The storm wasn't anything spectacular. So, I am surprised that there is such a huge area of western Howard County without power and it is taking this long to get it back online.

 

[Stump_Branch]

Im in the great vast middle of nowhere carroll county. As i write this, on a cell phone, still no power. some areas have others dont, and i sure dont see alot of crews out aroud here, so we must be low on the list. No worries neighbor let me plug my fridge into his genset, i gather jugs of water to flush the toilets. Parents have city water so showers are 20 mins away. Could be worse, i could be scrounging a tree off the house.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Sunny and nice here all weekend. Our hearts go out to those who suffered loss. Just received an email from a friend. It is a bit hard on the eyes to watch because the camera man did not know how to hold still but it shows some damage for sure.

Bridge in Vermont

 

[Remmy122]

Well yesterday I cut from 2pm to 7pm... and got 1 wheelbarrow load of dogwood... not what I was expecting. I helped get pine off a church members roof (didnt see a need in taking it since there is SO much oak on the ground) then helped another older couple with an oak that fell in their yard. The owner wanted to keep the wood I guess. After mentioning 30x that I burn wood and scrounge for it I wasnt offered any. Im thinking he had other things on his mind.

Did come up with a truck load of pecan already cut to length. I just saw a church has a big old oak down and a pile of logs cut to length and a whole lota tree left to go.

The local college lost some really nice and old oak trees, sure is sad to see them go, although the grounds people are a little relieved. They always had a terrible time trying to get the grass to grow under them and hated the leaves. The city has 1 major street thats been closed for about 3 months to totally repave and an amazing number of old oaks fell in those 4 blocks.

Hope all our VT and NY folks are doing ok, News showed some pretty scary videos of flooding up there.

 

[VTHC]

Vermont got pummeled by Irene...
Luckily where i live got away relatively unscathed (Northern Champlain Valley). But the central and southern part of the state are completely devastated - to the point of major state highways completely gone.
This was pretty breathtaking too.

We certainly didn't need this on top of the massive flooding this past spring.

 

[bogydave]

Nice to here the helpful nature of your community, neighborhoods pulling together & helping others out like you are doing is great.
The reward is just being able to help & getting some wood is just a bonus.

Good luck

 

[gzecc]

8" of rain in less than 2 days. Little water in the garage, because the sewer grates clogged while I was sleeping. Never lost power but lost cable early sunday. Its back now. The amount of water was unbelievable. The local rivers were turned into vast waterways. They also went down very fast, probably after 1/2 a day they were back to normal size. Unfortuately for the people who recieved this water, down hill from here, are in a world of hurt. Manvill, Boundbrook, Hillsborough etc....

 

[Hurricane]

I put out a 5 gallon compound bucket and it was full to the top when the storm was gone. I never expected that. No big trees on my property came down but lots of trees down around town. I lost power Sat night and finally hooked up a generator this afternoon that someone let me borrow. I cleared a medium large cherry from my road and a large red oak up the road on Sunday. I will go scoop up some of that wood but I am really not in any need of wood right now. I have 3+ years stacked and another bunch of standing dead and live trees I am taking down in the fall. Prolly close to 6 cords more. but the wife likes the cherry and I will likely give my dad the oak.

 

[gyrfalcon]

Vermont got pummeled by Irene...
Luckily where i live got away relatively unscathed (Northern Champlain Valley). But the central and southern part of the state are completely devastated - to the point of major state highways completely gone.
This was pretty breathtaking too.

We certainly didn't need this on top of the massive flooding this past spring.

No big problems where I am in southern Champlain Valley, either, but I gather Rutland has basically been cut off from the rest of the world. For that matter, although I haven't investigated yet, I think my corner of the world is maybe also cut off by road washouts.

Hard to imagine what happened here if you're not familiar with VT-type geography-- 500 mountain streams all went berserk at once.

 

[ecocavalier02]

we got 8.5 inches here. pretty crazy. never seen it rain like that.

 

[Cluttermagnet]

We got off pretty light here. One big 8in Tulip Poplar branch fell across a couple of my wood piles. Didn't even knock much of it over. Just one county away, they got way more rain and trees down. We didn't lose power, either. Makes up for the week without power last year. Just darned lucky.

 

[Bad Wolf]

96% power outage here in Colchester CT (central), most of the towns east of the river are 80-100% out. Lots of downed branches and some trees, not much flooding where I am though. I had to use the Newer Lang Rover to pull the Old Series Land Rover out of the weeds Saturday so it wouldn't be sitting under a big tree. Nothing came down but I wanted to play it safe.
I'm running the generator a couple hours in the morning and a three hours or so at night, so we can take showers, wash dishes, cook meals and get the freezer and fridge nice and cold. In between times I run the fridge on a small 900 watt two stroke generator. Just enough to keep the fridge running but runs 6 hours on a gallon of gas.

It will probably be 3-5 days before we get power back.

Greg H

 

[Stump_Branch]

We got off pretty light here. One big 8in Tulip Poplar branch fell across a couple of my wood piles. Didn't even knock much of it over. Just one county away, they got way more rain and trees down. We didn't lose power, either. Makes up for the week without power last year. Just darned lucky.

Sounds like that poplar was just trying to join the party on the ground..

 

[albertj03]

Lost power here at about 1:30 on Sunday afternoon and it's still out. Trees down here and there, seems like mostly maple and poplar. One maple at my mother in law's had the top snap right off and go flying across her driveway. There is a monster poplar tree right on the edge of my trail out back that is still standing but it's broken almost all the way in half and the top is wedged in a big oak tree.

Not sure what I'm going to do with it since it looks extremely dangerous. I'll have to get a pic of it and get the groups thoughts. I don't think I can drive the truck that far down the trail. If I could I would probably get the longest tow cable I could find and pull it down. I'll have to see how close I can get with the truck.

 

[VTHC]

Hard to imagine what happened here if you're not familiar with VT-type geography-- 500 mountain streams all went berserk at once.

Exactly!
And, of course, all of the roads in and out of towns follow these rivers and streams, so they get washed out - cutting off towns. The bigger rivers (Winooski, Lamoile, and Missiquoi) are able to absorb some of the deluge, which helped ease the immediate destruction in Franklin (where I am) and Chittenden counties. Lake Champlain water level rose a foot in 24 hours... that is pretty impressive considering how big the body of water is.

Supposed to go help my friend out who lives south of Middlebury (Brandon) this weekend, but i'm not sure i can get to him. Hopefully roads will be passable/fixed by Saturday!

 

[fabsroman]

Im in the great vast middle of nowhere carroll county. As i write this, on a cell phone, still no power. some areas have others dont, and i sure dont see alot of crews out aroud here, so we must be low on the list. No worries neighbor let me plug my fridge into his genset, i gather jugs of water to flush the toilets. Parents have city water so showers are 20 mins away. Could be worse, i could be scrounging a tree off the house.

I went to Home Depot in Eldersburg (i.e., Carroll County) yesterday morning to buy some extension cords and a couple other things I needed. I really prefer that one over the one in Ellicott City. They hauled two pallets of generators out and put them at the front of the store. They were all gone by the time I left. I had everything hooked up. Had the 220 from the generator hard wired into the well pump at the breaker box and had extensions going everywhere I needed them. Had my office computer up and running and was about to start cranking out billable hours, and then the power came on. It was about 7:00 last night. Took me another 2+ hours to get the compressor shut down and back to its original state, to disconnect all the cords and wrap them back up, and to plug everything back into the house. That was a good 2+ hours spent though compared to not having electricity.

I am going to buy one heck of a generator and a transfer switch or two after this ordeal. I never had to worry about this stuff at the townhouse and within 6 months of living at the new place I have this issue. Much easier just to plug in generator and start it versus all these extension cords and hard wiring stuff in.

You get power back yet?

 

[gyrfalcon]

Hard to imagine what happened here if you're not familiar with VT-type geography-- 500 mountain streams all went berserk at once.

Exactly!
And, of course, all of the roads in and out of towns follow these rivers and streams, so they get washed out - cutting off towns. The bigger rivers (Winooski, Lamoile, and Missiquoi) are able to absorb some of the deluge, which helped ease the immediate destruction in Franklin (where I am) and Chittenden counties. Lake Champlain water level rose a foot in 24 hours... that is pretty impressive considering how big the body of water is.

Supposed to go help my friend out who lives south of Middlebury (Brandon) this weekend, but i'm not sure i can get to him. Hopefully roads will be passable/fixed by Saturday!

Do check the Vtrans road map (http://511.vermont.gov/main.jsf) before you try, and I'd say don't even think of trying to go secondary roads if the main ones are still out because they're not listed on the map and they'll surely be worse. As of this morning, Rte 7 is closed both directions from 103 down to 4 as well as in several other places. Rte 73 into Brandon is also closed I think both east and west of town.

 

[gpcollen1]

Well, New Fairfield is still in the 70% range without power. Filled a 55 gallon drum and some buckets for the storm so toilets are good. Moved the frig goods to coolers on Sunday night. Kept the freezer shut int he garage. Borrowed a buddy's generator, he never lost power in Danbury, and hooked it up for a few hours late last night. Wasn't planning on having hot water but the water in the tank was still quite warm - so wife and I had a hot shower last night. Electric HW heater but it is designed for garage use so it has 3" of insulation inside the metal jacket. Going to juice up the in-laws today when I get out of work. I think I came in just for a break from the house and some internet.

Did manage a cord of Locust yesterday - it was down on my road and pushed to the side. All smaller rounds too, which means my back likes it...