Hurricane Sandy

Well, we're sitting here in the house and waiting. The waiting is always the hard part. For days now the exact path and landfall location of Hurricane Sandy was in question. And there was also always the outside chance it would head east, out to sea. From the looks of it now, though, it will be barreling into New Jersey, although from the direction of the storm's winds the ocean water will be forced in such a way that the storm surge will be pretty bad, even here on the north shore of Long Island. Hurricane Sandy is a category 1 hurricane with winds of 90 mph and a pressure of 943 mb. It may be an odd thought, but maybe there was a reason besides needing more sun on our garden that had us cutting that tree down last week, before we knew this storm was coming. It not only shaded our garden, but hung over into the neighbor's yard, with large branches brushing up against their roof and windows and hanging over their fence. Just minutes ago a large branch snapped off the fairly huge maple tree just outside our kitchen door. The sound of the snap and crash had us all running to see what tree had fallen. Rick, who minutes before warned us not to venture down to the beach to see what was happening, grabbed his camera and went outside to snap a picture of the tree. He wanted to update his blog post. Annalee suggested we sneak out the front door while he was busy in the back, but the wind is gusting pretty bad and it's probably not such a great idea to dash down the street. Last year's hurricane devastated the road that runs along the dunes -- now down to a footpath rather than a street -- and I wonder how the houses are faring. Anyway, hopefully no other trees will fall, but the worst of the wind has yet to hit. Back to waiting. The electric company warned of power outages of up to 10 days. The lights just blinked, so I'm turning off the computer!

Rick forwarded me the photo of the downed branch.
Probably the first of many more branches we'll have to cut and bundle.
And here I thought we were done after we chopped & bundled the tree last week!