Sunday, August 22, 2021

We Got Lucky At The Very Last Minute

 

This was the scene last night. A glass of wine. Maybe several. After Lisa and I spent the entire day prepping for Hurricane Henri. Yes. You read that correctly. Hurricane Henri. At the time, Hurricane Henri was expected to make landfall very close to our area as a category 2 hurricane. We were advised to plan for a category 1 hurricane. 

If you have read this blog over the years, you know that I take storms very seriously. We have 4 furry kids. All of their meals and treats and snacks are homemade. 

To back up a bit...

This storm hit my radar early last week. It caught my attention. I talked to Lisa about it. She told me to keep my eye on the storm and we would prepare for it. 

On Thursday, our grocery shopping day, it still was looking grim. I altered our grocery list and we only shopped for what we would need to prep and for our meals through Sunday.

On Friday, the weather reports were looking grim. Really. Really. Grim. The only positive bit of news was that the storm would hit us during the day on Sunday instead of on the overnight Sunday into Monday.

I was happy for several reasons...

Lisa would be home the day before to prep the outside while I made preparations indoors.

Lisa would be home during the storm.

The storm would hit during daytime hours.

Aside from that, the news wasn't so great all the way around.

If the storm hit as planned, the winds would gust 70-110 mph. 

Our electric company put us at a level 2 alert. That meant at least 69% of the state would be without power and to not expect power to be restored anywhere between 10-21 days. That was going to completely suck because we are expecting another heatwave early this coming week.

The governor had already declared a state of emergency.

Gas stations ran out of gas early yesterday.

The grocery store shelves were pretty much empty yesterday.

Blah. Blah. Blah. 

Our tiny grocery shopping was done on Thursday.

On Friday, Lisa picked up some batteries because we were running low.

She also stopped at the packie store to buy wine and Mike's Hard Peach Lemonade. 

Our vehicle was filled with gas.

Yesterday, we didn't need anything and we prepped and hunkered down.

Neither one of us got a lot of sleep last night.

I monitored the storm from time to time.

The good news was that it never gained strength to a category 2 hurricane.

The bad news is that it shifted east which meant the storm would make landfall in eastern CT (us) and western RI.

Moments before landfall, the storm lost momentum and became a Tropical Storm.

We got some crazy winds. Lots of trees and powerlines down. Lots of roads closed. Lots of people lost power. 

West of us got a lot of rain that they did not need. Lots of flooding.

But, at the end of the day, we all dodged a bullet.

Our lights flickered. We had a couple of brownouts. But, we still have power as of now.

We are not out of the woods quite yet. 

We could still lose power.

The storm is going to backtrack and deliver another punch of rain.

But.

We're hopeful.

If we still have power tomorrow night, I'll take all of the frozen water bottles out of the freezer. We won't have to cook chicken and vegetables and homemade dog treats for the kids. Because. They are well stocked.

Life will resume.

Lisa, our kids, and myself are exhausted. We busted our asses with prep. Our kids were restless and pacing because they knew a bad storm was coming.

We can finally exhale for the next couple of days. 

And...

Count our blessings. 



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