Hurricane Irene and after

Hurricane Irene arrived in my area on Saturday afternoon. It was just rain initially, so I was able to go out and run a few errands but I stayed home the rest of the day. Amazingly, there wasn't a power outage despite tropical storm conditions and even though the wind picked up after midnight. The next morning, I went out to check for damage. There were only two fallen tree branches: one in the backyard and one up on the roof. I got the ladder out and it wasn't difficult to climb up and pull the branch off the roof. While I had the ladder out, I also cleared the rain gutter.

Since I had the afternoon free, I went geocaching in Central Delaware. I figured the major roads would be open, at least, and I was curious to see how other parts of the state fared. Not so well, apparently.



That picture is of Tappahana Bridge Road, near the bridge part of it, in Hartly. I made a stop there because the "Tappahana's Bridge" geocache was in the flood zone. Fortunately, it wasn't very deep by that time so I was able to wade through but it was amusing to see fish swimming across the road! That same creek submerged every bridge in its path in Western Kent County, so after doing that geocache, I actually had to travel into Maryland to detour around roads closed due to high water. No problems with the geocaches themselves. There was only one that I noticed was dangerously close to getting washed away. The rest were either placed above ground or on the ground but not in a spot with bad drainage.

( The caches... )