Tuesday, October 30, 2012

And Then, It Was Morning...


The storm is done. At least here. Winds are light in my region, though they may still gust quite strongly for the remainder of today. It looks like the storm maxed out here at 8:00-9:00pm EDT yesterday, and Baltimore Washington International recorded gusts near 60mph at that time. So far, over 6” of rain fell here that can be attributed to Sandy. The flood danger is not yet over, as rivers and reservoirs will continue to rise as rainwater runoff flows into them. Over 185,000 customers in Eastern Maryland are without power, still several thousand more in DC and nearby areas, and Western Maryland is currently under quite a bit of snow. Areas on the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast Coasts? Well, we’ll be hearing about just how bad the damage there is over the next few days.

Experiencing a weather event of this magnitude is always strange for me. In some ways, I thrive on chaos. It forces my mind to focus on one thing, whereas I’d otherwise be thinking of 5 things at once. So, it’s very strange when the storm’s over, because often I start to think “That’s it? What do I do now?” At the same time, I know there are thousands upon thousands of other people within just a couple hundred miles of me wishing that they could think “That’s it?” after the storm has passed through. I also know that if the storm’s track had been just a little bit different; if the storm had traveled just a little bit further south, the damage here could have been devastating. While I can look out the window and see no noticeable damage across the street, I can also look around the windows, within my apartment, and see that the structure itself was stressed in the storm. Relatively substantial cracks in the drywall developed around the windows at the front of my apartment, presumably from the windows flexing in and out with the wind. Had the winds been much stronger than 30 or 40mph sustained with 50 to 60mph gusts, I do not know how long that wall would have held up.

A proper “After the Storm” post may come later. May…

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