So after days and days of dire warnings, battening down the hatches, and making all kinds of preparations, hurricane Irene turned out to be pretty much a non-event at my house. Lots of twigs and branches down and intermittent power outages (the longest of which was about 12-15 hrs) for a couple of days afterwards because the flooding took out a power substation, but that was about it. Not a DROP of water in my basement. Oh wait, I lied: I accidently forgot to bolt the basement door and it blew open in the wind Saturday night, so a little rain-spray blew in through the open doorway – does that count? But elsewhere, not a drop.

I think I can now safely claim that my house NEVER floods!

The picture shows the river of water running through the dogs’ potty area and down the 17′ “cliff” behind my house. One of the rare times living in a hill is A Good Thing!

But others didn’t fare so well! Just a couple of blocks from me and on lower ground there was
some MAJOR flooding. And the complex that includes Skyline Agility‘s Garnerville training site also suffered severe flooding, including structural and roadway damage. Unlike these poor folks, we don’t think the water reached us on the 2nd floor (nobody’s allowed in to see), but the bridge in front of our entrance was washed away and given the extent of the damage all events/classes at our building are cancelled for the “forseeable future.” Time to put up that temporary fence on my little grass patch!

Hurricane Irene did indirectly affect the life of my little porch cat, Cassie, but that’s a long story and another post in itself.