Mom, Irene hit me!

As you East Coasters may have noticed, Irene has swept up the coast leaving power outages and destruction in her wake.

Last night around 7:45 PM I checked the weather on my phone and told my husband that the torrential rain warning was only in effect until 9:45 PM. Excellent! This is good news. It was warm and sunny out and there was pink on the horizon. (Pink sky at night is a sailor's delight) I guess Irene is going to miss us. We went to bed expecting the best. Around 12 AM I awoke to rain beating in the roof of our little 5th wheel. Darn! I woke Mike and we duck taped a trash bag to our ceiling over the skylight hoping it would keep it from leaking on us too much.

By 6 AM our trash bag was bowing, the sky light over the kids bed was leaking and we had put an empty trashcan under it to catch the water and the wind was picking up.

Around 9 AM we decided to pack it up and go to my mom's house to weather the storm. We packed up the dogs, kids and our new kitten. (Yes, we got a kitten yesterday. She is so cute. But that is another post.) On the way to my mom's we passed a power truck clearing a fallen tree and downed wire from across the road.

The rest of the day has been pretty good. We lost power twice but it wasn't for long either time. I was concerned a few times that we were going to lose some of the tall pines around the house, but so far so good.

I've been reading on Facebook all day of others in the area who have lost power and someone even lost the roof on their barn.

7:52 PM, by now Irene has been down graded to a Tropical Storm. There are still flood warning in effect and wind speeds of 50-65 miles per hour. It's been quiet and dry here for a few hours but I suspect we are in for more wind and rain before the night is over. I did take a few pictures today that I will add to the bottom of this post tomorrow. My prayers go out to all those who have been less fortunate than us.