After The Storm

I'm back, and even though nothing happened to my mother and me as a result of Hurricane Irene, the storm did plenty of damage in my neighborhood as well as other parts of New Jersey.

My house escaped damages and power failures, though the electricity did flicker a bit the day after the hurricane passed (August 29) while the electric company was working nearby. It seems two trees fell and took down electrical wires on either end of the avenue behind ours, cutting it off both directions. The electric company and the police department worked together to clean up the mess. Both trees were cleared and both sets of wires were restored in less than a day. All I had to clean up were tree branches in the backyard.

The Passaic River, a major river in New Jersey that goes around the town I live in, flooded to historic proportions. Two car dealerships in the next town were flooded, as well as much of that same next town. U.S. Route 46 (which only goes through New Jersey despite its federal designation) crosses the Passaic four times because the river flows in an upside-down double-U pattern, and so that highway is closed at many points.

While the flooding and the power failures are bad and historically so, it could have been worse. In Vermont, which Irene hit after being downgraded to a tropical storm, whole towns have been cut off by the kind of flooding no one in Vermont would have ever expected. After all, no one expected the only landlocked state in New England to be affected by a tropical storm.

New weather patterns - possibly caused by climate change - are becoming the new normal. Irene was the first hurricane to make landfall in New Jersey since 1903, when the Wright Brothers were busy inventing the canceled flight. We might not have to wait another 108 years for that to happen again. Thanks to a new storm forming in the Atlantic as a I type (more on that later) it could happen again as early as next week!