Hurricane Irene hit this weekend and other than loosing power I’ve escaped with relatively little damage.  The storm came through Saturday afternoon and evening and I spent the afternoon getting a couple of projects done (#1 & #2).  I lost power at 4 pm and the rest of the evening was spent reading by camp light while watching the trees swaying in the wind. I’d point a flashlight out the window whenever I heard the thump of a branch hit the ground.

reading by camp light

In the morning I surveyed the damage and found mostly just sticks and a few good sized limbs down.  One limb caught the unused cable line and it’s hanging about 6 ft off the ground.  Another branch hit the car and left a little dent on the sill above the driver door handle.

Front yard debris

Considering the number of large trees I have I was pretty lucky not to have anything bigger come down.  My next-door neighbors weren’t so lucky having a large tree fall into their yard and took down all of the lines to their house and their neighbors to the other side.  It even damaged the gas line causing the Fire Department to come out at the height of the storm at 9pm to turn the gas off.

The photo below shows the backyard before and after the hurricane.

backyard before and after

As of Sunday night I still don’t have power and Dominion Power has not yet even provided an estimate of when it would be back.  So far I’ve gotten the entire front yard cleaned up, but it will probably take a few more days to clean up the much larger back yard.