After the Storm

Well, Hurricane Sandy packed quite a punch! We are, just tonight, getting our first look (on television) at the damage in New Jersey and New York. Oh my! What devastation! Our hearts and prayers go out to those whose lives have been impacted so severely.

I was certainly thankful we were no closer than we were to the center of the storm! While we only received 3 1/2″ of rain from Sandy, we had winds just as fierce as any we’ve heard roar around the corners of our home before this. We lost four very small birch trees. And we lost power, telephone, internet, and television from about 3:00 Monday until 7:00 p.m. tonight (Wednesday).

The morning after the storm, this is the sky I awakened to.

About twenty minutes later, it was raining steadily again. We ate breakfast by the light of the oil lamp.

Later that day, curious to see what the world around us looked like, I ventured forth to town to run an errand and snap some pictures. Near our home there had been a tumble-down shack. Now it is simply a shack that’s tumbled down!

And just down the road, I found this old, rotted tree that had split apart in the storm.

En route to town, I saw this. The big pines are so quick to fall over in high winds as they are very shallow rooted and dense, so the wind does not go through them very easily.

Coming home via a different route, I found the road up towards our home closed. Ahh…that might explain our power outage. That large pine tree is only held up by the power lines on which it is snagged.

We are very thankful for so little damage and the minor inconvenience of no power.