With luck, we will keep our electricity and I can spend the next two days here! My district has already announced schools will be closed Monday AND Tuesday! Hoping all our trees come through unscathed and with any dead wood nicely pruned for us! ;)

My hostas have all their leaves pulled, most of tree leaves have been bagged every week, so the yard is clean, not much to blow around. Roof gutters and dry creek bed are clean. We are further inland in NY state. Maximum winds are forecast with 30 mph. Now I wonder if 30 mph winds will push and roll around a group of 10 heavy leaf bags at the curb. I thought to tie them all together with duct tape. Our garbage pickup is Monday am, high winds and rain will be Monday night, and leaf bag pickup is scheduled for Monday, but is actually on Tuesdays or Wednesdays.
Bernd

30 mph should be just enough wind to blow the neighbor's leaves onto your lawn.

Steve

But I have bushes and fences, so only few of neighbor's leaves will make it. Luckily in my part of the street all trees have shed their leaves and people picked them up. I could also worry to hear some white pine branches crack over night.

You have a more difficult time probably, are closer to the ocean and get full velocity, I am 300 miles inland north of NYC. We lived once in Topsfield, had around 1986 (was that Hugo?) 60 mph winds shake up oaks with a lot of debris on the lawn.
Bernd

This is a crazy storm. Up to TWO FEET OF SNOW in the strip of VA and WVA and such due to one part of the triple threat. Today our winds were up to 35 mph and I had a pot of begonias blown off the deck rail. Tree limbs whipping around. My neighbors who never prun their trees are more likely to have the north winds blow things down on their side of the fence for a change.

Around the shoreline or tidal areas, remember this is a time of "spring" tides, meaning on full moon (or new moon), we have higher highs and lower lows, plus the current is stronger since more water is moving. Where the storm surge is anticipated to be a certain amount, that is not counting the height of the waves, which can be another big feature of the storm.

They say that every state east of the Mississippi will feel the effects of this one. Just take care, everyone.

bern, you take care hon. I don't remember nyc ever being evacuated before. (smile) My girlfriend in PA may end up using your bagged leaves as winter mulch on her hostas.
Theresa

I have to jump Theresa's thread here because she is right to have concern for all those affected by the storm. If anyone hasn't seen the movie "The Perfect Storm" you should have. This one could produce a tsunami-like wave in NYC. Heed mocs warnings. She and Theresa are friends and we know how moc has had frequent personal experiences with big seas. So she too takes this very personally even though she is safe from danger this time.

Two summers ago high winds took down two large branches from the silver maple west of my house. They glanced off of my house taking down the power line. No serious damage done. My F. Aureo and August Moon which were half demolished looked like they had never been hit this summer.

But if I had been out there when they came down I might not be writing this. I'm the kind of person, or I should say WAS, who would stand on the roof looking for the tornado when the warnings sounded. My fall this spring that tore my tendon apart in my thigh trashed my sense of invincibility forever. From what is being said, being inside of your houses won't be good enough. This morning the death count in the Caribbean attributed to this storm is already almost 70. That area is nowhere as densely populated as our East Coast.

I just heard on WGN-tv the HMS Bounty, the ship used in the movies Mutiny on the Bounty and Pirates of the Carribean, has been sailing the Atlantic and is caught in the storm. Contact with her has been lost. She is used to train people to sail tall-ships. I didn't hear how many are aboard her. Theresa's praying for those aboard as I am typing this.

Do us a favor please, as Theresa has asked and post on this thread when you have gotten back home safely. I don't know if I could handle her worrying and crying all over the place if you don't. I am just teasing her; Theresa is a wonderfully caring woman, as is moc. I couldn't live without her.

Please do everything to be safe, even far inland.

Les

This is an awesome forum. I have only been lurking here for a short time, but find I consider it's members personal friends. Maybe I take too much at heart but I am who I am.

Please, please be safe.
Theresa

My biggest weather event was an ice storm 3 years ago with my white pines breaking several large limbs. I am in upstate NY and the clouds move now from East to West. At only 20 mph wind my pines sway significantly and it will increase to 70 mph in spurts. Luckily I bought a new chain saw 3 years ago, but then the Weather people hype it up often to sell ads. Good luck to those at the coast and in the Appalachians.

I live in Florida and Sandy has been on the Atlantic side for a couple of days. We oddly did not get any rain as everything else storm wise dumped on me all summer. I am amazed at how windy it is still here. It has not stopped blowing yet with very strong gusts for 5 days. Good luck to you all. I am headed out to see what got knocked down again. Some things I just leave where they are. Ready for spring, Paula

Hoping all of our hosta forum friends are safe and our thoughts are on all that are effected by Sandy. Well wishes from British Columbia, Canada

Here in western NC,nothing but high winds and some light rain,BUT,on the Tennessee border in the higher mountains,lots of snow and even higher winds. We are still not out of the woods here in the lower mountains,as this wind may even blow some of that snow here! We never lost power at all. Our prayers and thoughts are for the people in the northeast. Take care,everyone. Phil

Here in Queens, we fortunately did not lose our power. My home is on a hill, so flooding did not occur. My hostas were pretty much browned by now anyway, 'tis the end of their season. A few broken limbs in the street, but no flooding in the streets. The wind was HOWLING during the height of the storm, pretty scary. There were a few unaccounted-for big THUMPS that we heard. I saw nothing outside. My cats stayed VERY close to me throughout the storm. Other parts of NYC and the Eastern seaboard were not nearly as fortunate. Lower Manhattan was actually under several feet of water and a transformer exploded. A major hospital lost their backup generator and had to evacuate patients. The island complex south of Queens known as the Rockaways is completely under water! They say the subway will be out for days because it was flooded and shorted out. The storm surge in lower Manhattan was 13.88 feet, besting the old record of 10.1 feet. It's just a mess!

Esther, so glad to have you check in. I was thinking about you during the last few days, glad your area fared so well.
Where the population density is so great, folks depend on the transit systems to operate and I can just imagine how difficult it will be for ordinary people to cope until service is restored.

For those who were not harmed, the lesson is: IT CAN HAPPEN.

After 2 days of sawing up fallen branches,looking for 100's of potted hostas all over the back yard!! raking up all the twigs and leaves from the paths, I've finally got to read a few emails from concerned hosta friends and visit the Garden Web Hosta Forum. Besides power out,cablevision down it was a blessing that it lasted only 12 hours. Others in our Forked River community are still without electricity. Flooding was horrible on the water front homes, Just look at CNN, nightly nat'l news or Weather Channel and you see what the Jersey shore used to look like and what it looks like today. The Garden Web Hosta family is truely a family, Thanks for all concerned.
John

John, I have been to the "Shore" and loved it. I am so sad about the devestation there. But all that really matters is safety. I am so happy that with such a threat so few have paid the ultimate price.
I have seen the story of the two boys who were killed in their family room when a tree was thrown into their house. They were in a mandatory evacuation zone in NYC, as I understand it, and their parent's chose not ot evacuate. What a terrible cross their parents will have to carry for the rest of their lives. I am praying for them.
HostaLes was prophetic when he said homes would not be a haven in the force of such great energy.
Theresa

DigginDutchman, John, keep your spirits up and you will make a full recovery. Peace be with you and your community.

Living in western PA my whole life, the worst weather that I had to deal with was a bad thunderstorm or a lot of snow. When I moved out here to Philadelphia 4 years ago I never thought in a million years I would be sitting smack dab in the middle of a hurricane.

When I left work on Friday Oct 26th we had an email to all employees that due to the coming storm we might have to close on Monday Oct 29th.

Well sure enough on Sunday night they updated the email and advised that the stock market will be closed. So Monday I sat at home all day watching what would be the worst storm I have ever seen in my life.

I am only 27 years old, so I have not seen a lot of what life can offer yet, but I will tell you this storm is something I never want to have to live through again.

It was horrifying to listen to 80+ mile an hour winds smack against the house. Everything outside was blowing around like we were in the chamber of a vacuum cleaner. BF and I live in a heavily suburban area elven miles north of the city proper. It is a lovely place with old architecture and lots of trees. But those trees ended up being our downfall.

Our bedroom is on the third floor so I was almost in the canopy watching the tops bend almost in half to then stand straight back up and be blown the other direction. It truly is amazing how strong trees are and how much they can take before they give out.

But sure enough we did have one give out. A piece of the neighbor's spruce tree snapped in half and fell flat in our front yard taking with it the power and cable lines. By the grace of God it missed the house.

Amazingly we had enough slack (according to BF) so that the power wasn't knocked out. But now we had a downed tree with live wires under it to contend with when we went outside the next day. Scary stuff :(

Now we are almost a week past the storm and the streets around here are still a mess. A lot of roads are blocked off due to either power lines being down or just whole trees lying in the middle of the street. Some people are just now getting their electricity back after almost a full week.

We were fortunate enough not to loose power but I was without internet for almost the whole week.

Thank you everyone for your thoughts and prayers. We are safe and slowly coming “back to life”. This truly was one for the history books and something I sure as hell never want to have to deal with again.

Here are some of the pics I took for home owner's insurance. Not as pretty as a hosta but testament that mother nature is not to be trifled with.

Thank you again everyone, your thoughts and prayers made the difference.

Ludi

Elegans did sustain some “smashing” damage but she was on her way to sleep for the winter so I'm pretty sure she didn't mind :p

Ludi, I am so happy you are safe girl. Thanks for posting. I will never forget the home video of a man watching the huge trees in front of his house being torn apart or torn out of the ground. The loss of a car is minor. Think what would have happened if the wind had been blowing the opposite direction.
For some it was and they have paid with their life.
Theresa