Life According to Laura: Hurricane Irene

As I watched Hurricane Irene slowly move closer and closer to our area, I decided that it would be best to pack up the entire family (baby, dogs and cat) and evacuate to my parents house in Maryland. Of course my husband had to leave for a detatchment so I had to face this alone.

I wanted to get ahead of all the potential bad traffic from those evacuating from South and North Carolina.

Sure enough as soon as we leave, later that day my area gets a mandatory evacuation due to potential flooding.

The trip up to Maryland went pretty typical. We got stuck in a 6 1/2 mile back up through the bridge/harbor tunnel and Allie serenaded me with her lovely voice over half of the trip.

We arrived at my parents' house about 5 1/2 hours later and soon began preparing for Irene to hit. Yes, I evacuated to a place where Irene was still going to hit but I decided I'd rather be with family.

We stocked up our pantry with water, canned food, baby food and filled all three bathtubs up with water.

It was crazy seeing the lines at gas stations. People were filling up three sometimes four gas cans for their cars and generators. Stations were also hiking up their gas prices starting the day before the storm hit.

Interesting fact: If you fill up ziplock bags with water and freeze them, you can put these bags of water in your fridge if the power goes out. This will keep your fridge cold for a little longer.

The morning weather the day Irene came was ominous. There was a slight breeze and fast wispy clouds moving across the darkening sky. My mom and I decided to try and get in a walk before the storm hit but that was short lived because around 10 am the rain started....

The rain and wind sarted to get worse around 1230/1pm and stayed really rainy and windy throughout the whole day. Businesses decided to close early and people finished their last minute errands. Stores were also depleted of water and camping equipment.

We all stayed inside clued to the tv in order to stay updated on all the information on the whereabouts of Irene.

We unfortunately lost power at around 8pm and enjoyed an evening in the dark listening to the howling wind and a battery powered radio.

Side note: Our power thankfully returned the next evening but I know people who still do not have power! These people are also getting automated phone calls from the power company at 4 am telling them their power has returned when in fact it has not. Who does that?!

As forecasted, the major part of the storm passed by at around 2 am. The winds were strong and sometimes scary. My brother kept "watch" and stayed up to date on updates from his phone via The Weather Channel app and twitter. I couldnt sleep because I kept thinking about all the trees surrounding the house that could potentially fall on Allie and myself.

The next morning we woke up and were curious to see what kind of damage Irene caused and thankfully there wasnt too much except for this tree that fell much too close to the house!

We also saw trees down on power lines (probably why all of the main road in and out of D.C. had no power) and some trees on houses. A few boats at the marina my parents keep their boat were turned on their sides and a few biminies were blown off.

Im really thankful that everyone was okay and that the storm wasnt "catastrophic". I realize that we only lost a few trees and where I live didnt flood but Im glad I played it safe and evacuated to my parents' house. It's better to be safe than sorry!