Hurricane Season Begins Today

Gaston
Originally uploaded by greycharleigh.

This is a picture of the road near my house during Tropical Storm Gaston in August of 2004. Earlier in the day, the fire department rescued the driver of the car in the picture, and he was fine. A lot of places around town suffered damage from Gaston's flooding. Fortunately, we didn't at our house. Flowing water (not part of the creek show in this picture) got as close as about three feet from our deck, but in never reached our home.

The previous September, we had no power for six days because of Hurricane Isabel (it was actually a tropical storm when it got here).

Last year we didn't have any serious problems from hurricanes or tropical storms here. I'm not sure if that means this year we are due.

As a midwesterner who had never experienced hurricanes or tropical storms until moving to Virginia, let me say that they scare me to death even though we're quite a ways from the coast.

After Isabel, we were cooked out on the charcoal grill a lot for a few days after the storm to prevent wasting everything in freezer. We had steak every day for a couple days. Then we had to dump the rest of the contents of the freezer and refrigerator. We ate out sometimes, and I heated soup in a sterno-powered fondue pot. Now I own a propane-fueled Coleman stove (a camping stove).

For a little while, we lost water pressure (the pumps around the city lost power). Then we had to boil the water for a few days before drinking it (kind of hard with limited fuel sources). Fortunately we had bottled water. I have some now, but I need to stock up on more.

I love summer and vegetable gardens and flowers, but I HATE hurricane season.