Hurricane Sandy Aftermath

I’m not one of those people who gets all up in arms over potential weather threats. So when I went to Walmart last week and saw the bread aisle decimated, I had to laugh a little. We live in southwestern Pennsylvania, about 40 miles south of Pittsburgh, it’s not like we were exactly in the dangerous path of Sandy.

In fact, if it hadn’t been for the news, I would have just assumed we were having a really rainy week, because apart from one night with some mildly strong winds, we didn’t get anything other than steady rain over the past week.

To be totally honest, we had such a horribly dry summer that the rain was welcome. In fact, it was only two months ago that Thing Two stood IN the middle of the widest part of our creek looking at the dried up bed before heading to school.

At that point, all that was left was a tiny little smidge of stinky, muddy water. A shame, as the creek has been one of our favorite places to play during the warm months.

And our waterfall and tiny little swimming hole can be beautiful when the creek is flowing:

So when the water level dropped by several feet and things started to dry up, we took advantage of the chance to unload some extra granite a bit down stream so we could shift the dam and raise the waterline somewhere down the road.

This shot of Mr W with the granite gives a great idea of where our creek has been for most of this year.

Of course here’s how that same spot and the granite look right now in the aftermath of Sandy:

And the waterfall itself was roaring so loud, we could hear it from nearly 100 yards away as we walked down the hill.

My guess based on the water level is the normally waist deep water on adults is easily chest height right now.  Even going further upstream, the levels are still amazingly high.

Consider the shot above of the kids splashing near the tiny waterfall and look at it now…

As we walked further upstream to the spots where I usually cross (because it’s only about two foot wide and I can simply step across it…) the creek was so wide, even Mr W would have had a challenge jumping it.

And that spot where Thing Two stood in the middle of cracked earth and looked at the muddy remains of the mini-pond? Yeah, that’s got plenty of water now too…

So we’re faring just fine over here in Western PA. We’ve also been so glad to hear from our friends and family scattered across the east coast and in Manhattan who have weathered the storm just fine and are in the midst of clean up and recovery.

Our thoughts and prayers are also with the friends and family of the many tree crews and linemen who are leaving their families behind to go help with clean up and power restoration for those who took the hardest hits.

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