Sunday, August 28, 2011

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.



7 comments:

  1. I think this year has been rough for so many people and so many places. I don't understand.

    I feel for the people on the coast.

    And I can't believe how hot it is!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow, that photo of the Houston evacuation. So many unbelievable disasters have happened around the country these past several years. I wonder who is drinking your water. This weather in the south is so horrible. The 90s daily weather with no rain continues in Atlanta. I can hardly bear it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh my! I can't imagine having to leave my home for a hurricane. Around here we wouldn't make it very far because there are kind of just 2 main roads that would get you out of here to another state! I do know a lot of the back roads that might be faster to get somewhere.

    I agree with you that the weather has been crazy! I hope it cools down for you at your house. We have finally cooled down here. I'm so happy!

    Have a Great Day!
    Angela

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi Betty
    Thanks fro your concern --I added a few sentances to my last post telling everyone that my house and neighborhood fared well in the hurricane. We didn't have any flooding and did not lose power. We were very fortunate! I am actually in Denver this week, shopping with my daughter for her wedding dress. My husband and my Mom were in Brooklyn, so I was nail biting along with everyone eles worrying about how the hurricane would affect them. Thankfully is was not as strong as it could ahve been!.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Weather (bad weather) scares me to death!
    We have 3 grandchildren starting school at Galveston A & M, so I was feeling a bit guilty, because I was happy Irene wasn't going to hit the Texas coast.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Before the hurricane we had some bad flooding in Pittsburgh and three people died. When the hurricane hit, western Pa. had super-sunny dry weather. Weird.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hi Betty,

    Well we made it through the storm. Lots of trees down but no loss of power. We did however lose cable which means no tv, internet or phone. With three boys loss of cable is as bad as loss of power. There is just so much "family" time they can take. It was not as bad as they thought, thank God.

    Have a great day and hope you cool off in Texas real soon. Wish I could make our flood water into rain for you.

    Carey

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for taking the time to visit my little world and leave a comment. I appreciate hearing from you.

I do not receive all comments by E-mail and I'm not exactly sure why. I do try and remember to check the actual blog so I won't miss any of your comments.

I do not belong to Google+ and regret that I am unable to leave comments on Google+ blogs.

WORD VERIFICATION: I have NOT set up word verification for comments. However, every so often it appears on my blog even though I have chosen NO in the settings. Please let me know if you encounter word verification when leaving a comment so I can try and fix it. Thanks.