The Aftermath

Pink Storm Sky
Originally uploaded by Mainline Mom

This was the sunset on Friday evening as Hurricane Ike was rolling in. When this was taken Ike was still a good 100 miles offshore but we were getting a pleasant steady breeze with some high gusts. You can see some video and other photos in my Flickr stream. We did take in three evacuees from the coast along with their four dogs and one cat. We enjoyed ourselves for awhile, had a nice dinner and watching the eternal news coverage which preempted everything on TV. The news coverage has now been on the networks for at least 96 hours I think. It's getting tiring.

Anyway our power flickered a few times through the evening, and then went out entirely around 9 or 10 pm. The kids slept through most of it, except for Nathan who woke up for a little while mainly from seeing all the transformers blowing constantly which looked like lightning. We slept the kids in our room, Alex in the closet and Nathan on the floor. It got pretty hot in the house pretty quickly, and noisy. The wind pounded on the front of the house, ratting all the exhaust vents in the bathrooms and over the stove, whistling through cracks around the front door, and whooshing down the chimney. We actually didn't get rain for a long time because we were on the "clean side" of the storm, with it tracking slightly east of us. But the rain came and the transformers continued to light up the sky.

I would sleep for an hour or two and then a power surge would go through the lines and turn everything on for a split second, just long enough to make the security system beep, the cell phone chargers beep, and the ceiling fans turn around once. That would wake everybody up. Happened two or three times.

In the morning when the sun came up the wind died down a little but we still had to keep our animals inside. We were all a sweaty mess. One of our guests drove back to his house to find many large trees down in his yard, thankfully not on the house, and a bit of water in the dining room.

The wind finally stopped in the afternoon and we could open some windows to get some crossbreezes, but the humidity was still gross. When the rain stopped we went out for a walk to survey the house and neighborhood. Our house was great, only one window screen popped out. A few neighbors lost small trees and fence pieces, and a lot of roof shingles. We were fortunate. The power came back on around 6pm and we all rejoiced. The girls decided to spend another night with us since it was unlikely either of them had power. We all slept comfortably, although we were rocked by violent lightning storms and heavy rain from 4am till after sunrise. Some streets that weren't flooded yesterday are today because of all the rain overnight. Our mall is supposedly open so we might head out a little later, just to get out. I still have a lot of birthday presents to buy before a certain boy turns four on Tuesday.