Admittedly I wasn't panicking until Thursday night when I saw the projected path of the storm would be heading right for us. All day Friday I remained absolutely glued to the Weather Channel. I mean who wouldn't panic if they saw that ginormous storm headed straight toward you. And I mean straight toward you! Every projected path had the eye going right between us and NYC. I felt a little better when I realized that my fellow New Haveners were not panicking at all. Then I realized it was because none of them lived on the Coast! We, however, live literally four blocks, 500 yards from the shoreline. Over and over we were being told that the shoreline would evacuate. On Friday I spoke with our landlord who assured us that in the past 28 years they have never evacuated our street.
Saturday came, we went to Elijah's first football game. We had already stocked up on groceries, so we came straight home to obsessively watch the Weather channel some more. That afternoon we found out they were evacuating part of our area. The evacuations stopped just one street from our house. Our upstairs neighbors came down to tell us they were leaving to stay with family. At this point, I have to admit, I might have started to worry just a little bit. But my gut reaction was to simply stay put. We were well supplied, had all our storm windows in, and the main concern for our area was flooding. I could have really care less if my basement flooded. I had already spent Friday afternoon putting everything up higher so nothing would be ruined.
Saturday night it was raining lightly, with hardly any wind. We went to bed not knowing what to expect from the night. At that point Irene was still a Cat 1 and still heading toward CT and NYC. I think we woke up at 3:30 because something crashed down. I'm pretty sure it was a branch falling in the neighbors yard. We looked out the windows and it really didn't look that bad, so we went back to sleep. Around 8:14 my phone buzzed and woke me up. It was my dad asking, "Are you guys doing okay?" My first reaction was, "What why wouldn't we be?". It was then I realized that there was a hurricane outside. Actually at that point it was a tropical storm. The kids still sleeping Matthew and I got up and turned on the TV. To be honest, it really wasn't bad at all. I then got on Facebook to update everyone. We still had power. And hours later, we still had power. The storm came and went. That was pretty much it.
I can't help but feel disappointed. And relieved of course!
Looking up more information online I found out that West Haven did sustain a lot of damage. A restaurant down by the water, not too far from here, apparently was completely wiped out!
Later this afternoon when the weather had cleared out and the sun was shining we walked down to the beach. You could easily see just how far the water had come up. It had receded a lot but the waves were still insane!
Our neighbor's backyard got pretty trashed.
A restaurant across the street from the ocean, you can see how high the water came up.
The water here is Long Island Sound, so it's usually really calm, hardly any waves at all. This is what it looked like around 2 pm today.
We had to take a picture here. Right behind us is our "spot" where the kids and I have spent many a summer afternoon.
First thing I did this morning after the kids were settled was to check Twitter to see if you (etc) were ok. =)
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