Battening Down

So all up and down the East Coast people are preparing for or, by now, feeling the effects of Hurricane Sandy. By the time the storm reaches northern New England it will be a tropical (or post-tropical) depression, but I expect it to cause plenty of headaches anyway. In our area we are expecting rainfall of 2-3 inches with locally higher amounts and winds of 40 mph with gusts to 60. Local weather forecasters have said we may see gusts as high as 70 mph, not hurricane force, but strong enough to cause trees to lose limbs or fall altogether.

Even though it’s late October in southern Maine, a lot of trees still have their leaves, which may result in more downed trees and limbs and more power outages. Power outages, along with some localized flooding, are our primary concern. We’ve already gotten our local emergency response team up and going, and tomorrow morning we’ll assess conditions and decide whether to activate our local emergency shelter.

It’s tempting to pooh-pooh a lot of the hype. Goodness knows there’s plenty of it, but there’s no sense in ignoring the weather forecasts and taking sensible precautions. So part of our day has been taking things down outside, putting porch furniture away, and finally putting the storm windows down (oh, the joys of an old house). Oil lamps are full, we have water and non-perishables should we need them, and are otherwise just expecting a couple of really wet and windy days.

Stay safe, everyone.