Trees and branches down in my town and in the next town over where my daughter lives, there is more tree damage. Massive trees uprooted and almost the entire town is without power which won't be restored for 3-5 days. And school starts tomorrow.

We were so fortunate - we didn't have any damage and we never lost power. But it was still a dreadful night. We have a sump pump and a battery back up pump that are connected to the burglar alarm. If the water gets too high in the pit the alarm goes off in the house and at the monitoring station so that they can also call us if we're away. Well at 3:30 the alarm went off and we jumped out of bed and ran to the basement. The hole was filling up fast but my DH was able to manually lift the float on the battery unit and it kicked in, pumping out the water.

Then when the water started to fill again the main pump worked. He thinks something must have clogged the intake on the main unit and that it was sucked away when the battery unit emptied the pit. They worked perfectly the rest of the night - but we didn't get any sleep because we took turns sitting there in case the float stuck again.

We didn't even need the back up generator nor all the Tupperware ice containers I had in the freezer or all the extra containers of water sitting on the counter.

My neighbor had a huge maple tree come down in his front yard and when my DH went out this morning he said roads were closed all over and he could see the streams spilling into the road.

I hope everyone else came through unscathed.

Got through it with only a few limbs off the trees...and none of them fell on house, garage or decks.
Didn't lose power, and no leaks or flooding.
But...lost a lot of sleep over the tornado warnings.

I'm losing a lot of sleep over this storm and it didn't hit here! LOL!!

I just had to reaccommodate the 2 dozen students that were ending their break and heading back here to classes. . . again! And my boss is still stuck in Milton, NY so I am now busily trying to find a private jet to go get him in the morning.

Lots of wind, rain and flooding rivers in northwest CT...but no leaks or personal damage. Just lack of sleep[yawn].

All's well that ends well.

Anne

Glad to hear everyone is safe. I don't have TV and I just came online so I haven't kept track of the storm or the damage it has caused.

Anne

Well, the first day of school was cancelled in my grandson's town. I hope he found out on his iPhone because the town doesn't have power ,and I found out too late to call him watching the 11 news. It's really bad in Vermont now with terrible flooding. We aren't having flooding problems..just a gazillion trees laying on power lines and many roads closed. Who would have thought..an earthquake AND a hurricane within a few days of each other.

Here in upstate NY,we were out of electricity and water from 10:30AM until 6:30PM yesterday. I haven't ventured out of our park as all were advised via radio (batteries) to stay off the roads unless an emergency. We had much less wind that predicted, tho radio said that trees were down "all over the place". It was reported that 900,000 people IN NY alone were out of electricity!! I feel fortunate that we got electricity back before total darkness. We have a couple of oil lanterns, but a new cat whom I don't trust for a minute, so we will have to make some changes there.

As usual, there is major flooding in the entire area, from NJ up to the Adirondacks and a wider than normal east/west swath into Vermont/Mass. Northbound thruway was closed from W. Nyack to Saugerties (90 mi); southbound closed for a time, but not as bad.

I did lots of crocheting and played solitaire on my iPad off and on until lights came back on.

Glad the storm was less powerful than predicted, but now begins the long haul of 'cleanup'. Hate to say it, but we've had the most *perfect* weather here in Chicagoland. (We had our fallen trees and days-long power outages *earlier* this summer.)

We were pretty lucky. We only rarely get water in our cellar in the suburbs, so we only use a geyser pump (has to be operated manually). I knew this would be one of those times. It was--I had to run to the basement every 10-20 minutes, all night long to turn on the pump AND bail with a scoop and bucket since the water was coming in too fast for the poor little pump to handle alone.

DH spent the night at the country house--only problem there was the electric went out. He got the generator set up to operate the sump, if needed, and 55 minutes later, the power was back.

Only smallish branches down on each of our properties, no real damage, thank goodness.

But things aren't over yet. DH called me this morning. He works for a utility company (as a bill collector normally), they're sending him to an area in another area of the state. He may be working up to 16 hours today. Not sure exactly what job he'll be doing, but it has to do with cleaning up the aftermath of the storm. If he works the full 16, that would be till 11:30 tonight--don't know if that means he'd THEN have to make the hour+ drive home? or if he'd be back at his usual workplace by then (which is only 1 mile from our door). At any rate, I think it's going to be a long day for him. He said he'd keep me posted, but other than that first call, haven't heard anything from him. Hoping he and the rest of the workers are safe.

We had a lot of wind and rain, but no flooding. No trees toppled. I pulled off some of my remaining (green) tomatoes. The tomatoes I left on the vine are just fine. But Sunday at 9:30 am, we lost our electricity and phone service. Used cellphones to communicate with relatives and let them know we are okay. Today Monday the electricity and phone were restored around 1 pm(hurray). I was ready to phone 911 to say I had an emergency . I was going to kill my husband if he whined one more time about having no TV. He's in bed now with his remote and his beloved TV. I have some minor clean up to do-leaves and twigs. Hey, we got our trees pruned for free!! Tonoght I'm gonnna mix a can of soup with a can of chicken and call it dinner. My hospital dialysis unit told me what foods to buy to stay safe after Irene. I'm storing them for the next emergency.

I live in north-central Long Island...all my utilities are underground, so I lost no power throughout the storm.

I have a sewer in my neighborhood, so I experienced no flooding.

However...

My neighbor's red maple tree got uprooted and landed on my chain-link fence.

Around here, it'll be a year and a day to get anything cleaned up and fixed.

I was lucky - the tree could have landed on my house!

Carol

I live in Chicopee, Massachusetts, which is right between Springfield & Holyoke on the Connecticutt River about 10mi north of the Mass/Conn. state line.

The eye of the storm actually passed over us at about 11:15am and it was officially downgraded from a hurricane to a Tropical Storm while here. Winds were still about 70mph with gusts over 90mph.

Our immediate area suffered very little actual wind damage, save for a bunch of trees down and some homes that still had tarps on the roof from the Tornadoes that went through on June 1st.

Our immediate problem is flooding. We only got about 4.5" of rain, but immediately to the west of us they got 5" to 6" of rain. About noon a damn failed on the center branch of the Westfield river and sent a torrent down the westfield river into the Connecticutt river and the Chicopee river was already running at near flood stage.

Interstate 91 is the main north south corridor through New England from Norwalk, Connecticut and on up through Vermont. The interstate passes right through here and follows a track nearly parallel to the Connecticut River. About 20 miles north of us the Interstate is blocked on both the North & Southbound lanes because the river water is over the deck of a bridge. With all the runoff coming down from the west of us plus all the runoff from Vermont the Connecticut River is not expected to crest until about noon today, There are two or three communities north of us and one just south of us that are still watching the river and may have to call for an evacuation on account of flooding.

Fortunately our house is on a high bluff about 60ft above the river so flooding is a non-issue to us.

I can surely sympathize with those who are out of electrical power because I faced that problem nearly every month where I lived in Ohio, but here is Chicopee, that is also a non-issue. Our city has it's own power generating company that was originally founded in 1898 and to date our city has only had two major power outages that lasted more than 8 hours. Now we do get the occassional power outage if a tree knocks a line down or they happen to be working in a neighborhood and have to cut the power, but even then the problem is usually confined to one or two city blocks. In fact, last winter when we had the second 40" snowfall in ten days about a block from our house a huge tree fell, knocking out the power to our street for 3 hours and when we got our electric bill at the end of the month they included a letter of appology for the inconvenience to all the customers who lost power.

WE have a rather large Air Force reserve base about 2 miles from our house and they said on the news that the Air Force flew all the planes out before the storm, but FEMA had staged 119 tractor trailer loads of emergency supplies and all their personel at the base for immediate response. In addition,there was a company of National Guard troops standing by there and our local power company had 105 line trucks and crews staged their ready to roll on a moments notice.

I have a large Firestation about 400yards from the house and a large commercial ambulance company about 1/2mile away and 3 of the largest hospitals in the state within 6 miles.

On top of that, I am an amateur (HAM) radio operator and when any disasster threatens we all get on the air and form an organized communications net to help pass information for the fire dept, police, Red Cross and other response agencies in the event that commercial telephones & cell phones go out.

To give an example of how well our communities dissaster planning system works, last winter when we had to back to back 40" snowfalls in ten days, no street in our community ever had more than 3" of snow between trips with the snowplows.

Yes, its true, we cuss and complain about the high taxes here, but in retrospect, when I see the type of service we are getting for our money, we really don't have much to gripe about. I have certainly lived in places where it is much worse, and they seemed to have the same type of taxes,,,,go figure.

My town is very good about removing downed trees after storms. I saw a tree down Sunday morning in my neighborhood. By that afternoon, it was gone. In 1985 when we had Hurricane Gloria, they were just as good. Guess I should pay my tax bill!

Our Chincoteague mobile is fine as far as the neighbor can see. We will go tomorrow night to check the inside for leaks. Water went in our shed - but I can live with that. They were very lucky there. Chincoteague ponies are OK.
We are on the western edge here in PA and only saw minor branches down. Whew...

Here in Salem Massachusetts, we got heavy rains and winds, a few tree branches down and a bit of flooding, but nothing terribly serious, thank God. I've been listening to reports from Vermont, though, and it's pretty bad up there. There's been terrible flooding, and about a dozen towns are completely cut off from the rest of the state.

I'm in Norfolk. Hurricane Irene hit us broadside and we had some strong winds. We were braced for massive flooding (what they called "historic flooding") and a Cat 2 storm with sustained winds of 100+ mph.

As it turned out, the storm was not that big a deal.

We lost a lot of trees and most of the people around us lost electricity, but our little creek out back never even rose above its banks.

And boy oh boy are we grateful for that.

Rose

One town over from Rose - Got our power and cable back last night but several areas of our town still don't have power. Lots of down electrical lines and flooding from river. I have heard we lost 3 bridges, I know of 2. I was amazed the river that came over the high banks and bridges was back down to a normal high the next AM. The white water Kayak paddlers were happy.

azzalea...bet your dh will spend the night someplace...had you heard f other states were sending workers? i can't imagine them not asking for help...

Oh, no Susan--they come home for the night. He walked in at 11:30 last night, and was out of the house before 7 this morning. Today will be the same--they're working at the remote location until about 10 tonight, then he has to drive about an hour and a half back to his office, then it's only a few minutes to our house, thank goodness. At least they let them do their commuting in company cars, on company time.

But the nice thing yesterday was that the office they're working out of supplied them with all meals--really NICE catered meals. Even a carving station (turkey and ham) at dinnertime. Sounded like he ate pretty well. Don't know if that's the same today.

As to teams from out of state? I haven't heard one way or the other--usually that's the case, though. And sometimes, the guys like DH (meter readers, bill collectors, office workers) are used as 'navigators' to help the out-of-state guys find their way. Yesterday, DH was hanging out by some downed wires, making sure no one walked or drove over them. There are so many that the crews haven't gotten to all of them yet, so they're having guys 'guard' them. Won't know what he was doing today until, oh--closer to midnight?

Well, can't complain--his OT for yesterday and today is 2/3 of a mortgage payment. One more day like these and it would pay for the whole month! Although, I'm hoping this won't keep up too much longer--it's rough for a 61 year old man to work 16+ hour days.

We are in Virginia, eight miles west of the White House. Had rain and wind, but no damage. A neighbor's cable line snapped, and some trees are down. We were very lucky; other neighborhoods lost power for several days.

I have an intern here from Berkeley, CA. Her parents were frantic; first and earthquake and then a hurricane in one week. Not what she was expecting!

The insurance adjuster was by today. Gave us a check for the tree and screens and yard clean-up. They've been very good to us. Just a month ago they covered the damage that was done by a leak, ruining our bedroom carpet. Of course, we've been with the same company for 30 or 40 years and haven't had too many claims. I took Georgy for a walk today. It was my first time out since the storm. All you heard was buzz saws and all you saw besides trees down was trucks carrying a load of trees and debris. Most of the trees that I saw down were very healthy trees that were completely uprooted. We must have had many micro bursts. It's so sad to see the devastation. However, there didn't seem to be any damage to houses in the case of the fallen trees. My friend had two big trees fall in her yard and fortunately, they fell away from the house. Another friend had two trees across her driveway. I haven't gone out around town, will probably be out tomorrow to see the full impact.

BIL on Long Island lost 3 trees. One was knocked down by a neighbor's tree. SIL in Albany NY lost a 20 foot maple from her front yard. SIL on Long Island was fine-she had left during the mandatory evacuation of the South Shore of LI. She returned to find no damage, even tho she lives on a canal. Our trees got "pruned" for free. I spent yesterday (Tuesday) picking up sticks from front yard. Today I'll work on the back yard. One person we haven't heard from is my niece's fiance's father, who lives in Rockaway Beach on Long Island South Shore. He refused to leave his home, now nobody's heard from him. Possible he's fine, just sitting around with no electricity.