Monthly Archives: August 2011

Writing this off and on through the day Sunday. Lost power last night as well as cell service. We are all ok and fine. Lots of debris to clear up but no damage at all to house or property. A lot of the area experienced a lot of flooding and water damage. We worked this morning to clear the front yard and haul it all to the back to be disposed of at a later date.
We had power all through the first half of the storm but once the eye passed over the backside was worse than the front. Lots of heavy wind and rain. Soundside experienced a lot of flooding. A lot of homes at lower elevations had water inside. Listening to the local radio to get information as no one has any access to any news other than locals calling in to report. Getting updates from county management as well from the radio. News so far for power to our area is that they can’t get to the substation down the road from us. So the whole lower half of the county will be out of power for an indefinite time. Will try to post this as soon as I get a signal. More later.

The waiting game is in full swing and listening to the updates closely. Latest update at 2 shows the wind speed has dropped a small bit, but this is still a very large massive storm with potential for a lot of wind and rain. As well it is a slow moving system and we are expected to have a combo of tropical storm/hurricane conditions for approxiamately a 21 hour period, so the danger is still there in that respect. We’ve settled in now and all preparations are done. I’m trying not to eat up all the snack food we bought for the next few days, that’s a hard task as well for me ;) Just keeping an eye on the updates now. The outer bands have been moving through since the morning but not much to them, I just took a look outside and the cloud cover is becoming a lot heavier now so it will likely be a day or more before we see the sun again. Who knows what else we might see then!

I’ve been on the BBC Radio again ths year as well! another two minutes of fame for this year. lol I replied again to a story on the hurricane on their site and they contacted me requesting an interview. I did one last night for one of the local radio stions, can’t remember now which one, but just a quickie. Then this morning was contacted by BBC Radio Wales requesting one early this afternoon, which was fun to do, and just now got a call from the BBC London requsting one for this evening for one of their main news programs, or should I spell it, programmes!? I won,t bother trying to record it though. so don’t worry you will have to listen to the audio file! ;)

Back after a while for another update, long as we have power, Peace out from Grandy, NC Hurricane Central

Waking this morning to a bit of better news, the storm has weakened even if only by a few miles an hour, category 2 now and hopefully no major intensification. Still going to be a lot of wind and rain in the area. Praying we will be spared any major damage. I grabbed this image showing the latest projected path of the storm (purple line) the red star is our house. too close for comfort!

We’re settled in and have made all our preparations, just a bit more tidying up of the yard to do this morning. Forecast calls for the outer bands of the storm to be moving in the area around midday. they have just reached the Cape Hatteras area this morning aound 5:30 am. Conditions will go downhill from there through the night bringing tropical storm force winds and heavy rain. Hurricane conditions are expected early Saturday morning. Anxious time now just waiting. You dont think about it so much when you’re busy doing things to get ready, but when the prep is all done and you’re just watching the news and weather, it gets to you a bit. To all our friends in the area, stay safe and pray for things to pass over without any major damage. More as it comes

Just test out my wordpress iPhone app in case we lose power in the coming storm. ;)

Watching the news and keeping an eye on Irene. We’ve started today checking our supplies and getting a few things ready, never hurts to be prepared!

We’ve been lucky in the sense that this is the first hurricane of the season, unlucky in that it’s looking as it may head our way. We DO need the rain though! very badly , it has been very dry this summer. We’ll keep you udated as things progress.

In memory of Nicos and Gretchen