The sun is about to set. What’s left of Irene is North of Virginia Beach. Light rain is falling, but the colors on the radar are showing less and less angry colors.
The main perceived threat here is the Housatonic river may flood. At Derby, it is still low enough that it goes in and out with the tides. People here still can’t forget the “flood of 1955” that washed corpses out of a cemetary, and killed one person. Not much happens here – I would like people some day to talk to each other – oh yeah, that’s the year the new widget plant opened instead of obsessing about a big storm 55 years ago.
The feds built a flood wall around the part of downtown that floods, most of which is just empty undeveloped land. I fully expect if the water ever gets high enough to matter, we’ll find out nobody checked to see if the gates will actually close as designed.
In 1938, the state was hit by a really big storm with a 30 foot storm surge…
http://members.cox.net/d_laroche/hurricane/hurricane.htm#table
(Warning, railroad pictures ahead!)
That was the same hurricane that washed over large portions of Long Island.
Electricity still on, Internet still on, 3G internet access functioning. Peanut butter in the closet. All systems OK.