I always have to have a flash light on me and I have to buy food quite often.
I'll probably write more about my experiences after I get my power back. It is interesting living like this.
Most of the damage was minimal or non at my house. Lots of limbs laying around but others were not so lucky. Many tree fell and on power lines knocking out power for over 800,000 individuals around the Richmond area.
So, if you haven't been able to tell from the photos that I have posted on this blog or from what I have said about before where I live, I live back in the woods off of the neighborhood road. We have trees all around my house; Tulip Popular, Sweet Gum, Pin Oak, White Oak, Red Oak, Holly, Dogwood, Hickory and a few pine. Mostly hard woods. Anyways the storm tore up mostly the Popular and sweet gum trees since they are soft wood of the deciduous tree group. Anyways, you would find leaves from those two trees everywhere along with limbs, and there were a few very large limbs that fell.
So for the most part, we really only needed to rake up the yard and sweep our back deck from the storm.
During the storm, I picked up a lot of limbs during the storm on Saturday. I did spend a lot of time outside on Saturday during the storm and enjoyed it since it was a bit of a thrill. It was quite cold out in the rain, then again I only have PJ bottoms on when I went out. I had to go out and clear the driveway on Saturday around 4pm or so because my mother has coming back from work.
Yea! No trees leaning on the house or limbs piercing the roof of our cars!
My friend had lost of limbs in the front from their Gum tree, but lost a large oak tree in the back destroying their fence.
Sycamore trees have very large leaves and probably acted like sails in that wind that we had. That is why they cover the road over here.
My father and I went out early on Sunday morning (6:30am) to get coffee and warm biscuits at McDonald's. It was out of power and we drove around for a while and found out that a majority of places were out of power. We ended up at a Valero that had a huge line just for coffee and we grabbed some honey and cinnamon buns inside. There was a mad rush for gas there to. Later that day they were out of all of these conveniences. Also 295 was completely deserted of traffic.
New WaWa was out of power till yesterday afternoon...
Not much to do in the house without power so I brought out the bike and started to ride around my neighborhood and others near by to grab some photos.
Oh and about after 8am or so the sun started to emerge from behind some white and light gray clouds. Sunday for the rest of the day was a great day weather wise.
In the neighborhood next to mine there was a tree completely blocking the entire road.
My neighbor that is also in the back of the woods with me had a tree leaning on their garage. They mostly had limbs and shredded leaves like me.
Took a small walk around the woods for a bit, couldn't pass up the day!
This was kinda behind my neighbors house. It took out other trees with it. Back when I was a kid this added so much extra play time when I went down in to the woods. You can climb all over them, I would have at this moment but it was wet to climb and also attracts the largest of hornets.
So not only did the winds take out small limbs and branches with leaves bu it hailed outside our house with acorns and hickory nuts. We have large hickory nuts but the three that you see in this photo at the tip of my hand were larger then I had ever seen and I was wondering if I had Walnut trees somewhere which I had never seen in the woods around my house before. It actually was large hickory nuts that had yet fallen and grew very large husks. They were at least golf ball size and would have hurt like a mother if I got hit in the head with one of them on Saturday.
Later that day I had kayaked on the North Anna where there wasn't many trees down along the river but the waters were up more then normal I guess but not thing like flooding stage really.
So it is Wednesday and has been a few days since it hit the Richmond area but there are still some lights out that have yet to get power and also some peoples homes and business that sustained damage and/or out of power. I am one of them and we have a well so we don't have any running water currently.... That is probably the most annoying part. I have been showering at three different peoples places now and we manually have to fill the toilets to flush them, which is troublesome but it really makes you appreciate the technology that we have now. I mean currently right now I am at the point of just the basics of survival; food and shelter. Lots of people without power have food, shelter and running water so they can shower, get fresh water and working plumbing system. I do know that I am still lucky compared to others who have lost homes and cars. I know someone who lost their house because a tree landed right in the middle cutting it in half basically and also totaled their vehicles.
I will probably write about my experiences of this past week when I get a chance but I am SOO behind on home work right now that it is killing me. I need to read tons of pages and need to print of notes which I can't because I don't have power at home and managed to get off the hook at lab today.
Please let me know how your Hurricane experience went. I know that New England and New York area got it really bad, so please let me know!
No comments:
Post a Comment