Ed, I am not sure if you are referring to the generally wet summer that this part of New England has had or this last few days' rainstorm. If the summer in general, our fall color has been a bit more muted than usual.

If it is this most recent rain I imagine that the only effect would have been to knock down leaves sooner. I think that the actual potential for fall color is developed sooner in the growing season. By now, most of our foliage has dropped or is fading to brown.

Central Connecticut was in drought, so the 4.5" of rain was welcome with another 2-3" tomorrow, perhaps. For the first time in the 42 years I've been in this house, this last rain pinpointed a clogged or punctured perimeter drain. The flooding cellar was a joy, but this is a better time of the year to discover this problem. So this coming week, the landscaper will be removing all the foundation plantings in the raised beds that embrace about 70% of the house. I had not planned on having to have all new shrubs around our house - ever in this lifetime - so yes, the rain is affecting some of us differently. But I'm glad it happened in autumn - a perfect time to plant. Now to figure out WHAT to plant.

Jane

Oh, what a misery, Jane. Did all the perimeter drains need to be dug up and replaced?

On the positive side, plant shopping is always fun, and you may find some good sales.

Since we have had a wet summer up until the last few weeks,and last week gave us at least 2", the river is running quite high to reduce levels in Lake Winnipesaukee to make room for the rains expected Sunday and Monday. I am expecting the trees to be fairly bare by the time this coming storm ends.

NHBabs, the work has not yet begun. We'll see.

That's terrible, Jane. I've always wondered how infallible those perimeter drains are, and apparently not completely, not always. Hope you get the problem repaired/replaced.

Jane, I hope that your basement didn't flood any more with the additional rain or that you have a pump of some kind until the drains are fixed. The storm woke me in the night - wind and rain were fairly fierce for a couple of hours, and when I headed out for work today, the first two roads were blocked due to downed wires. Since my work hours have a goodly amount of flexibility, I turned around and came back home. No guarantee that the rest of the route would be clear or that the power would stay on at work.

The Merrimack is running at close to spring flood levels when I checked just now, and I wouldn't be surprised if we've gotten more than 4" in the last week. I've pulled in my rain gauge for the winter, but the 5 gallon buckets had more than 2" after the last storm, and we've had quite a bit more in the last 24 hours. The oaks and beech still have leaves, but most of the other trees have given up for the winter with the exception of the Kousa dogwoods. My fothergilla still has nice color, more red this year than often.

NHBabs - if only the gods worked that well. The electricity went out at midnight Sunday and another 3" of rain fell spreading the new water over even more of the cellar floor. Fortunately, we had saved a bag of old towels because that's how I had to get the water off the cellar floor. Luckily, we have a laundry room with a sink in it down there, so I didn't have to keep 'bucketing'. Much better after the rain stopped. However, after 30 hours with no power, the ice maker decided to melt and flooded the kitchen floor which greeted me this morning. As long as no one 'official' showed up to throw paper towels at me, I was fine on me own. Power is now back on after 39 hours and I've placed a call to buy a whole house generator! Barn door effect this time, but there will be another time. Rain in forecast for Thursday. Aren't you glad you posted this thread, Ed? My shrubs are now well-watered for the winter.

Jane

Jane, I'm so sorry.

We had flooded basement this summer and had new lines dug in to carry water to our sump pump but pump has no battery back-up yet and a portable generator isn't going to cut it for us anymore. Life sucks and then it gets better. So much for the golden years. Bird watching keeps us sane, but winning the lottery would help.

After not losing power during the storm, we lost it yesterday. Running the house on the generator so that the sump pump runs since we sit on a layer of clay that sends water into our cellar. DH installed it after a 3" flood one year, despite foundation drains that were installed previously and still work fine. Sometimes they just get overwhelmed.

Happily my inlaws, in their late 80's, now have power back.

We lost power for about a day and a half. Our son who likes to find bargains had 2 out of 4 generators crap out (usually used for camping trips). We only have a portable generator and ran it just enough to keep food cold/frozen, toilets flushed, and essentials. The sun was out yesterday but I was too busy but hope with today's sun I can finally get my garlic planted before the next rainy spell. In order to get our granddaughter to school at 6am Monday for a special bus trip to DC, our son had to clear a tree that was across their driveway and then when our daughter-in-law was almost at the end of the road, another tree blocked their way so she had to call a friend to meet her and let her borrow her car. While my husband was out, a former customer showed up because the generator he bought two years ago and NEVER tested didn't have the proper plug. My husband had done the wiring for him but the generator hadn't arrived and customer never called him to test the generator. Turns out there were two different plugs depending on size of generator and customer needed the other one, which he forgot he had. Meanwhile, 4 inches of water in his basement.

Due to a high water table we have two pools of water in the yard. One is usually something we only see in the spring when it actually gets deep enough to have an occasional pair of ducks use for an overnight. Our old farmhouse was built on a higher pile. The old foundation has been spray foamed. The floor gets damp and sometimes a bit of water seeps in but nothing serious.

I'm building a new lasagna style vegetable bed so the rain is nice. I'll keep adding layers as I can like kitchen scraps. One of my chores will be to dump the old soil from planters on top. I've asked my husband to add some bags full of grass/leaves from the mower bags. With the rain, I don't have to water the pile. Some call is sheet composting. I finally seeded on bed with a small package of green manure seeds from Johnny's. Looks really good and didn't need water since I seeded it, maybe early September.

We only lost power for most of Monday. When it wasn't back on by sundown, I was worried we wouldn't have it until morning, but it came on an hour later. Most of the houses in our neighborhood have generators to run sump pumps, but we are one of the few houses that are high enough to not have water issues. Our daughter had flown home from college over the weekend for her grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary. We dropped her off at JFK in the morning in a light shower and headed home. When I turned on the Jets game, I was very glad her flight was as early in the day as it was.

I have no idea when I am going to get the fall leaves taken care of. The tractor bagger only works when the leaves are quite dry, but it works extremely well then. I may have to go some raking in the meantime.

We're still out of power, and will be for a while longer. Nearly our whole peninsula went black. Both access roads out of our house were blocked with downed trees and power lines until Tuesday. In fact, there are still power lines across the road with a trunk(s) on them, making them sag low. The depth of destruction is illustrated by the fact that those sagging lines have not been removed, meaning there are other issues that are higher priorities! Schools cannot open until all buses can run, and the buses can't fit underneath the multiple sagging lines across roads around the peninsula. We do not know how long before they can get to them all. School has power, but they can't open unless the buses can get to all students. On the bright side, one big branch missed our car. I'm amazed that the wind was so high it actually flipped the branch 180 degrees before it hit the ground! Very glad both cars are OK. We had amazingly high winds. No downed trees or branches hit cars or the house, thankfully. Really amazing. Plants seem to be fine, and I know they enjoyed the rain. All rain up here is welcome this year.

I guess our biggest casualty is a mooring line for the dock breaking. But, the dock, even though it was at an angle that made me very very nervous, suffered no damage.

I was wondering about the school policy. I think our schools were closed 2 days. Deanna, glad your cars were ok. That's a lot of no school days to use up before winter. The NH mountains area was hit pretty bad with Plymouth NH flooding and a house swept down stream in Warren. Our high tunnel is ok but I saw on facebook that Eliot Coleman's high tunnels suffered some damage. I think he is near Ellsworth. More rain today. The Merrimack River running through Concord is very high, like in spring. Did not get my garlic planted yet.

Lovely property, NHBabs. Hope the ducks return.

Wow, NHBabs, that is an extremely large water gain. I can't imagine the number of gallons required to raise the water level that much.

Here are some pics from the two roads that provide our access out. These were taken today and clearly show our power line issues. Granted I haven't been in New England for too long, but the only time I saw damage like this hang around this long was when the tornados went through NH and torn down every single power pole on one particular road around the corner from us. Those poor souls waited a long time for power, but somehow we were just around the corner and on a different line.

The lines in the second photo don't look too low, but driving our SUV under it was a totally different story. If felt like we were going to brush the lines!

That is a lot of damage, Deanna! We were lucky that our only power outage was a purposeful one that the power company did to repair some damage, and lasted less than 24 hours. I have one neighbor on the other side of town who still doesn't have power.

Here is one more photo of the river, taken by my DH. This area is usually a grass area under the trees with the river in the background, and sometimes it becomes an island with the closest area under water, but it only becomes a full part of the river when the water is really high. If you enlarge the photo you can see the main River channel just beyond the silver maple trunks, and then the far bank with the plantation of red pines. For a couple of years one of the trees had an old blanket above my reach in the maple branches, placed there by flood waters. Maybe the ticks will be swept away!

Ticks and voles perhaps? ;-)

How long does it usually take the water to go back down?

Deanna, how long it takes to go down varies quite a bit, but I expect it to remain relatively high for a week or more. The Merrimack forms from two rivers perhaps 10 miles upstream from us. The Pemigewasset has no dams, and the lower parts of Plymouth NH were flooded over the last few days, so it is running very high since parts of its upper reaches got several inches of rain. Whatever comes from the Pemi is what we get, without any controls. The other river, the Winnipesaukee, comes from the lake, and it has several dams both for flood control and for power, so they release water in such a way as to minimize damage for folks on the big lake, the power companies, and those along the river. So I think we are now seeing a lot of water from the Pemi, and once that decreases a bit, more water will be released into the Winnipesaukee until levels are reasonable in the lake for the winter, which may take a while.

The farm at the end of my road has several flood plain pastures, and they are all under water right now. Maybe they are experiencing some vole removal . . .

For comparison, today's photo, taken from the exact same spot as the one from a week ago.

The river is still running well above average, but has gone down about 4', judging from how it looks against the steeper banks near the house.

That's a big difference. I can't see the river in the new photo. We didn't get power until Monday night. I've never gone 8 days without power before. Totally miserable.

ohno, Deanna. Last night's weather forecast said more strong winds are coming as the newest cold front moves in so they expect more power outages. Hope you don't have another outage.

I, too, hope the power stays on today and have great empathy for you, deanna. We were without power for 12 days twice; once in 2011 and again in 2012 and we have a well. Hauling buckets of water to flush, from a neighbor a mile away, was enough to put a propane-fueled generator in our garage. I refuse to deal with gas cans.

A drier basement at present, but I still await the landscaper to dig up the perimeter drain and all the shrubs in the raised beds surrounding the house foundation. So if we keep power during this current wind storm and no rain, I'll be thankful.

Jane

Oh, great. I hadn't heard any recent news, so thanks for the heads up, defrost. Winds are supposed to be from the WNW, which I don't think (in my limited experience ) are as bad as anything from the S. Northerly winds are buffered by all the land behind us. Southerly winds hit us dead on in coastal regions. Hopefully everything will be OK. Apparently they expect already weakend trees to fall, which makes sense. Keeping our finger crossed, water jugs full, and dishes cleaned!

ours went out for a little while this morning but came on about 11:30 am just as I was planning to start heating soup on the woodstove. Wind is pretty brisk around here.

I hope everyone got through the past couple days without a power outage. A week or more without electricity and running water is horrible to contemplate, Deanna. I hope you've paid your dues for this winter.

We are very fortunate to have a faucet/pipe in the cellar where we can fill buckets, but unfortunate to have no space in our home where we can safely install our small woodstove (which sits unused in the cellar). The room I had earmarked for it is too small and our larger rooms are filled up with furniture. We have a small generator that will run our freezer, and also a small electric space heater to keep the pipes from freezing, but power outages are no picnic. When high winds are predicted I always fill the buckets and containers from an upstairs tap ahead of the predicted bad weather.. I'm not superstitious but it seems if I fill the water containers, we don't lose power, and if I neglect to, we do.

We didn't lose power! We didn't even have huge winds. Just decently strong winds. I do know some places in Maine lost power, but I'm going to assume they did have stronger winds in those places. Love how you see the silver lining, sped. Even the smallest things like a faucet make a difference. Our southern windows get LOTS of sun, which keep the house warm even in winter when the sun is out. One thing to be very thankful for in every power outage! A silver lining!

I am, however, most thankful for the fact that OUR POWER DIDN'T GO OUT!

Talked to an "electric guy" who works for Central ME Power, and he said we and the neighboring county were the two hardest hit by Philippe. I am not in the least bit surprised.

Deanna, did I read this wrong? "We didn't get power until Monday night. I've never gone 8 days without power before. Totally miserable." Hopefully I did!

We did NOT lose power this past Friday, Nov. 10. We DID lose power due to the cyclone sometime Sunday night/ early Monday morning (10/29 or 10/30) through Monday evening on Nov. 6. Yes...eight days...of appreciating how nice life is with a well pump. The longest I'd ever been without power before that was two days, maybe just under three. What a shock to the system! Thankful for the generator we borrowed from friends who got their power back on wednesday. It saved our food in the freezer!

On a side note, we had to buy a new deep freezer this summer. It was mid-priced, and seemed to be a huge upgrade from the old one as far as insulation and keeping chilled. I think we would have lost all of our food had it been our old one we still had.