My company went into major panic mode and asked everyone east of Cleveland to shut down their workstations before going home (usually we just log off). I can see this being a good idea for our offices that might be hit by the storm, but I’ve yet to see any projections of Irene crossing the Allegheny mountains.
Oh and Weather Underground is the shizznit. I discovered that site back in 2005 when I was trying to figure out where Katrina might make landfall.
Bri2k
The weird thing is that I live on a hill, but the hill is flat for a good section. Water can definitely back up.
I believe that’s another thread and any posting related to this will get it kicked over to Cafe Society. 
It’s still in the cow, duh. :rolleyes:
North jersey here, near hoboken.
Should I be worried about my windows? What about window air conditioners, should I take those out?
I went and picked a bunch of green tomatoes and will let them ripen in a paper bag. I hate to do that, because some of them were destined to grow up into big delicious tomatoes and I have cut them down before their time, but hey, this is better than scraping tomato goo off the house after the wind has fun flinging them around. Plus, fresh ripe tomatoes to eat during the post-Irene apocalypse. Win-win!
Everything is ready and all I can do now is wait and hope nothing breaks or leaks. I can see my neighbor’s gutters from where I’m sitting, and there are weeds growing in them. Looks like he’s growing a small herb garden along his roof. That won’t be good if it rains a ton.
I’m trying to stay informed, but I’m tired of the Weather Channel’s permanent state of panic. They find the biggest numbers with the smallest probabilities and throw in a dozen exclamation points for good measure so you know just how freaked out to get. At least nobody’s added “pocalypse” or “geddon” to anything yet. That said, given the look of the satellite images from NOAA, I’m surprised we’re not getting anything yet. The sky is dark and the wind is picking up a tiny bit but I wouldn’t look outside and think to take cover. I may even go out for lunch.
Well, nobody else has checked in, so can I assume we’re all having similar issues? I’m posting from work… currently powerless and phoneless at home because of the tree that hit the house and ripped out all the power lines. No major damage to the roof, but it ripped off gutters and siding and scared me half to death when it hit the side of the house by my bedroom and then scraped its way along the house before thudding to the ground and making the whole place shake. I am grateful it broke when it hit, instead of coming through into the bedroom.
BGE said they’ll come “soon” since it’s technically a downed line, which is dangerous, but no sign of them yet. They can’t restore power to the neighborhood until they fix our line, because a *live *downed line would *really *be a problem.
A neighbor with a generator offered us some freezer space, so I managed to save some food, but a lot of my perishables have perished. 
How did everyone else make out? Everyone safe and accounted for?
Safe and sound here in southeast PA. Lost power for all of about a minute during the height of the storm. We have a ton of leaves in the yard and a bunch of downed branches. Had a bunch of water in the basement but my sump pump kept that from getting out of hand. At one point water was literally pouring in from the walls nearest the sump pump. It was like a bizzarro waterfall down there. My husband went down with a shop vac and cleaned up the rest of the water today. It smells like ass down there but is otherwise alright. I’m running the dehumidifier to try to help with the rest of the moisture.
Any idea what to do about the smell? The basement isn’t finished. It’s got a concrete floor but many of the walls are covered with this nasty fake paneling that we may have to finally rip down.
Posted on one of the other Irene threads – like most people here, we were w/o power for a day and a half, but now it’s all better. Very little damage to be seen. One highway section closed. I think it was a lot worse farther inland, with flooding and such.
In a rather unexpected development, Vermont got hit HARD. Few if any destructive winds, but most of the state got over six inches of rain in a twenty four hours, and some got over 10 inches. Rivers, especially in the southern part of the state, rose to as much as fifteen feet over their banks, wiping out homes and business buildings.
Many many roads partially or completely washed out. At least half a dozen communities are completely isolated, with no way in or out. At least eight bridges on state roads literally swept away, and more on town and private roads. Standing water six feet high in the middle of towns, mud everywhere.
The northern part of the state was not hit as hard. At my house we never lost power nor Internet, and only suffered a small leak in the roof (not the first time - it’s somewhat chronic). I was able to get to my workplace (twenty miles or so) without any trouble.
On the way home I detoured through a town that had been flooded. The water had drained off, but the mud was all over, pumps were working hard, and cleanup services were just getting going.
We’ve been lucky, but much of the state is a literal disaster. Check out this video. And this one.
If you’re interested, check out the slide show.
We’re OK here in northern VA - never even lost power. Antigen, sorry to hear you’ve been slammed so hard :(.
Big meh here in the northern Boston suburbs. 2" of rain, and enough wind to knock down a few small branches. We did have some minor drama Sunday morning, when the power went out at 7:30, but it came back in 30 minutes or so.
I, myself and Irene… will not kill you, the air force will certainly kill you.
http://crashrecovery.org/haarp/US-Patent-No-4.686.605.pdf
Thanks, we’re ok now. Power was restored Saturday night, so it lasted a week. Our community association will be having meetings with BGE to see what can be done about preventing this sort of thing in the future - apparently this happens a lot because we’re an old development with a lot of big trees. The neighbors who have lived here longer than us say the area loses power often and we’re always last on the priority list to be restored.
I was stunned to see Vermont’s damage. Holy crap.