I Survived Isaias

But I'm not putting that on a T-shirt.

My household was one of the lucky ones.  We had three momentary outages during the height of the storm, during the 1:00 PM hour, and I swear that I thought any one of them would turn out to be a multi-day outage.  At about 3:35 PM, there was a brownout and the lights dimmed.  The sun came out later but the wind continued to howl.  By that evening it was over.  I was relieved, of course.  (For the record, we've now had 61 outages since November 2009, adding the three momentary outages from Tuesday's storm to the tally.)  

Then we suddenly had a cable outage while I was working on an article while wearing my other hat as a reporter.  My story was delayed because of it.  Fortunately, the cable service was restored by Wednesday morning.  I was convinced that Isaias wasn't as bad as Sandy had been.

Then I drove around town.

There were downed trees everywhere, and one tree in particular caused a lot of damage when it fell.  It not only took down power lines, it took down at least three utility poles, splitting one down the middle, and it laid waste to several transformers.  Another tree on the same street fell and brought down more wires.  After three days, power crews were still working on getting the wires back up and clearing the street.   Yes, people are saying that this storm was worse than Sandy in many ways.

We were lucky this time.  But I haven't forgotten that the Atlantic hurricane season has yet to peak, and that it hasn't produced a major hurricane (Category 3 or higher) yet - and that six to ten such storms are predicted.  Not all of them will make landfall, and not all of them will make landfall on the East Coast.  But we only need one to make an already bad year exponentially worse.  And the Northeast - which, the almanacs say, is under a hurricane threat this fall - hasn't had a major hurricane pass through it since 1938.  We're overdue for one. :-(

Anyway, I continued my hiatus even after my cable service was restored, because I decided I needed a break. And now that I'm back, I'm not looking forward to commenting on the news of the day.

Hiatus Announcement

This should come as no surprise, since I'm in the path of Tropical Storm Isaias (which fortunately got demoted from Category 1 hurricane status), but I am putting my blog on hiatus for a few days.  Even if I don't lose power, I won't likely be back until next week because, quite frankly, I'm emotionally exhausted by everything that's happened in the past five months and everything that could happen in the coming - dare I say it? - year.  (That is, through next August.)

I had actually worried about a hurricane hitting this area in the fall, and given the prediction from the almanacs and the overactive Atlantic hurricane season, and that could actually still happen.  But I didn't anticipate a storm like this coming so soon in the year.  Perhaps the best thing about Isaias, apart from the fact that it's not a major hurricane, is that it will be out of here sooner than expected.  Forecasts now predict that it will be out of the Greater New York City area by five o'clock this afternoon and we could actually have some sunny skies around dinnertime.  Will my power stay on?  I don't know, but it's 50-50 right now.  This storm is not unlike Irene in 2011, and my household got through that without a scratch.  Some of my neighbors weren't so lucky, as trees of theirs that were standing the week before Irene were horizontal the day after.

My Music Video of the Week feature will still publish automatically in case of a power outage; I'm moving the videos to posts on the main page rather than changing them on the separate Music Video Of the Week page.  If I have power as of Friday, August 7, my Music Video Of the Week page will be reactivated.  Whatever happens, I hope to be back soon, as in this coming Monday. Wish me luck.