Homegrown String Band News: October 2012

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Sandy Made a Mess on Long Island

Sandy has come and gone. While we personally got off pretty easy, Long Island overall is a disaster area. We had a couple big trees come down but neither hit the house or our cars. Many of our neighbors weren't so lucky. We took a bike tour around town this morning and saw lots of trees down on houses and cars, blocking roads, and hanging on power lines as well as heavy erosion to beach front property. Our lights were out for about 4 hours, but we are among the few families on LI that have power. 90% of the island is still in the dark and will be for a week or more. Lives were lost, homes were lost, and the flooding on the south shore and in NYC was catastrophic. I expect recovery will be a long time coming. Our prayers go out to all the people up and down the coast who suffered and are still suffering from Sandy's dreadful wind and rain.

Monday, October 29, 2012

Sandy's Knocking on Our Door

11:30 AM October 29, 2012

It is getting real windy here, not much rain yet, but according to the weather service the wind and rain are going to get pretty intense during the next 36 hours or so. They are calling it Frankenstorm, a mega storm, a hybrid storm, the Perfect Storm . . . one meteorologist said it was "part nor' easter, part hurricane, all trouble." Whatever it is, Sandy looks like it will create a dangerous situation for a large part of the eastern U.S. Though we live within two hundred yards of the Long Island Sound, which is expected to experience a 12 - 14 foot storm surge, we are up on a hill and don't expect to be effected by tidal flooding. Our property is heavily wooded with some big trees close to the house, so that is our biggest concern. Yesterday we received an automated phone message from the local power company (LIPA) telling us to expect outages that could last up to ten days. We are pretty well prepared for anything, well anything but a tree coming through the roof. I hope all our friends, up and down the east coast, have taken precautions to stay safe and don't experience too much damage from Sandy's devastating left hook.