Flashlights, storm windows, a cleared yard and one nervous homeowner waiting to see what Hurricane Irene would bring.
I'm definitely not in a panic, but I can't imagine living in Hurricane Lane and dealing with this every year!
There's something strange about preparing for a storm that's still hundreds of miles away. Outside, everything looks perfectly normal, but the television keeps showing that enormous swirl creeping up the coast and suddenly you're looking around the yard wondering which perfectly innocent flower pot might become a projectile tomorrow.
Battening Down House 173
So, time to batten down the hatches. Here's pretty much the extent of my preparations:
1. Putting together an emergency kit. Water, batteries, flashlights, and getting the old portable shortwave radio out.
2. Filling the bathtub with water tomorrow just in case we have floods.
3. Topping off the gas tanks in both cars.
4. Putting down the storm windows.
5. Going around the yard and putting away anything that could fly around (you know - flower pots, bird houses, trash cans...).
6. We only had water in the basement once, and that was due to city lines being overwhelmed. They're predicting 7-10" of rain, so gonna go through the basement and make sure anything of value is off the floor. My air compressor immediately comes to mind!
There you have it. I'll probably think of some other things, but for now this is it. To those of you in the direct path - good luck and stay safe!
1. Putting together an emergency kit. Water, batteries, flashlights, and getting the old portable shortwave radio out.
2. Filling the bathtub with water tomorrow just in case we have floods.
3. Topping off the gas tanks in both cars.
4. Putting down the storm windows.
5. Going around the yard and putting away anything that could fly around (you know - flower pots, bird houses, trash cans...).
6. We only had water in the basement once, and that was due to city lines being overwhelmed. They're predicting 7-10" of rain, so gonna go through the basement and make sure anything of value is off the floor. My air compressor immediately comes to mind!
There you have it. I'll probably think of some other things, but for now this is it. To those of you in the direct path - good luck and stay safe!
I've been there. Storm coming, house buttoned up, flashlights checked twice...and then you start finding things to do just because doing nothing feels worse.I remember one storm when I moved half the basement upstairs. Stuff that had sat perfectly safe for twenty years suddenly looked like it was begging to be rescued.Eventually, though, there's nothing left to do.That's when you sit by the window, hear the first rain hit the glass, and look around at the old place thinking, 'Well, old girl...you've probably seen worse than this. - A Fellow Homeworrier
Looking Back at Hurricane Irene from 2026
UPDATE: Looking back on this post all these years later, what strikes me most is the waiting. We'd done about everything we could reasonably do: put things away, checked the basement, lowered the storm windows and made sure we had flashlights and water. After that, there wasn't anything left to do but listen to the rain and wait to see what Irene had in store for 173.
The rain was only part of the story. For roughly seventeen hours on August 28, tropical-storm-force winds battered our part of eastern New York, with gusts commonly reaching 50 to 55 mph. Combined with rain-soaked ground, the winds brought down plenty of trees and power lines, leaving widespread outages across the region. This image was from a town about 10 miles away:
Here around 173, the wind came in two rounds. The first arrived during the morning as Irene approached, with northerly winds funneled down the valley.
Things eased during the afternoon, but as Irene moved away, the winds shifted west and came roaring back through, at times every bit as strong as before.
We had some minor vegetation damage, but with all the wind and rain, ol' House 173 ended up rather unscathed!
Anyway, it wasn't until around midnight that the wind finally began to settle down. After nearly seventeen hours of listening to it, the quiet was more than welcome.
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