CRAZY WEATHER

I'm always glad when a hurricane doesn't come this way and then I feel a little guilty for wishing it on someone else. Actually, I wish this crazy weather would leave everyone alone.

Last year it seemed like most of the tropical storms/hurricanes headed off into the Atlantic. I'm wondering if this is some new weather trend. Time will tell. It's usually in September and October that the storms start popping up one after the other.

It looks like a lot of flooding along the east coast, but things weren't as bad as originally predicted. Thank goodness. Sadly, there was loss of life, but I guess it could have been so much worse.

Right now there are many people without electricity. I know the electric companies are very good about helping each other out. After Ike an electric company from Mt. Airy, NC came and got our lights turned back on within two weeks. Last week crews from here left in a caravan for the Washington, DC area. Hopefully, electricity will be restored along the east coast quickly.

I was concerned for the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area. It is densely populated with roads that were never meant to handle the traffic that they do on a normal day. All things considered it appears evacuations went fairly well.

I remember trying to evacuate the Houston area for Rita. In 19 hours we traveled 45 miles and finally turned around and went home. This was right after Katrina and everyone was still on edge. City and county officials were on the air telling everyone to get out. Then the hurricane took a turn and we didn't even get a drop of rain. Fortunately, lessons were learned and now they tell only the people in mandatory evacuation areas to get out. The rest are told to shelter in place so the ones that need to get out can move away from the coast. The Houston area has a lot less people than New York and New Jersey, so I was concerned about how things would go for the folks up there.

As you can tell from this picture we had no traffic when we turned around and went back home. We were home in 25 minutes! The moral of the story...never tell an entire metropolitan area to evacuate.


My husband says he'll never evacuate again. I never say never, but probably won't either. We are in a mandatory evacuation area for a four or five, but our home has never flooded although a lot in our neighborhood have in the past. Our block and one other have never flooded in thirty years, but we're at the highest point.

I'm wondering what the insurance companies will do. Here they refused to insure against hurricanes after they had so many claims from Katrina and Rita. You pay your premiums for years and then when they have finally have claims they pull out. Doesn't seem fair, but that's how it works.

On Saturday we tied the record for the hottest day since they started keeping records. It was 109 degrees in Houston. In the last 25 days or so we've only had one day where it didn't reach 100 and it rained that day. Thank goodness! The drought is really taking a toll on the trees and shrubs. I've put out an extra water dish for the wild creatures and every morning it's bone dry. I'll be glad when winter comes and it finally cools off here. We have two seasons...a long summer and a little bit of winter.