It will take a while to get things back to normal but glad to see
'Frankenstorm' leave.
It caused great devastation and now reconstruction, recovery and cleanup
in the aftermath goes on.
My heart goes out to all those who suffered loss from this deadly storm.

Aside: Realistically, I think we can expect extreme weather to continue
in the future due to climate change.
Unfortunately, the cost will be in the billions of dollars.
Something we can ill afford to add to our huge budget deficit.


[Edit: Aside]

The facts speak spoke for themselves:

http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/bbw.jpg

And a young author asked in 2007

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=gngHiD-AsBw

It costs less than not doing something about it.

The question is Why do we deny [science]?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=5yz4KmUvY2o

Do you too, txyankee?

Too bad there are too many people that can do something about global warming thinking the same way.

Outstanding idea!

I was watching the Doppler radar every half hour for the day before the storm hit. Irene came through my yard the year before right at the border of hurricane strength and that was a little scary but didn't do any actual damage. Well, yes and no. I had had the foresight to cut down the huge oaks and elms right near the house a few years before so I was fairly clear on that score. There is still one left though that I might have to look into. Unfortunately one of my neighbors had a rotting apple tree that collapsed onto my driveway and brought about a ton of wisteria vines with it.

With Irene, it was the rain that was the real issue. We got so much rain here that my basement didn't just flood, I could have floated a boat out of there. The house is built into a hillside so the basement empties into the garage which empties into the driveway. I literally had a stream running through the garage. It was a sight to behold.

But with all of that, the power didn't go out even for a minute. With Sandy, there was almost no rain. The center of the storm hit well to the south of us and what we mainly got was wind. Even then, I don't think it was anywhere close to what Irene was packing, and yet we lost power for about 7 or 8 hours. I'm lucky since I'm only a few miles from a major power generation plant so my area tends to get top priority I guess and I'm certainly not complaining - not when people on Long Island are still without power and even some people I know here only got it back late last week.

But that same neighbor I mentioned before also had another tree in their yard. This one seemed to be healthy though but was a lot bigger than an apple tree. I'm guessing at least 60ft. That's now lying across my back yard. But hey, at least it's not on top of my car or my house right?

You know the thing that really ticked me off though? People making stupid *ss jokes about the storm during the run up. OK, I don't mind people making fun of NJ, that's fine. But I draw the line at natural disasters. Making jokes about that sort of thing just shows you to be the philistine you pretend to not be.