I was without power from 3:00 pm on thursday until 6:00 am this morning. Went driving around the Mt. Vernon area of Alexandria yesterday, trees down, some on wires, a couple of light poles down too. I was in the woods training at Ft. Bragg NC when Hugo came through there in the late 80's, I'll take what we got this time compared to that!!!!
The weather people will always over rate a storm for 2 reasons:
1- make ratings better when you scare the **** out of everyone and have them watching nothing but the news to see if anything new has come up.
2- what if they said it wouldn't be anything and then it comes through and rips a new *******? Somebody would try to sue the news stations, claiming that they didn't report something that cannot be correctly predicted in the first place. Mother nature will always win, 1 rule to never forget.
I am not happy at being without power for so long, but at least me and my family are alive and safe. No damage to my home or cars. For all of that I am gratefull. The hardest part was no internet to see what was going on and not able to get onto the forums .

 

Well -- i only read about the first 6 posts or so --- but for all of you that think this hurricane was weak, you should come up the the hampton roads area and check it out.. :-\ we lost power about 9:30 am on thurseday and didn't get it back until friday afternoon.. we lost 8 trees, a fence and a few doors just at my house.. and there were 2,000,000+ people without power just in south easter virginia.. and if you all didn't know -- this hurricane was also nice enough to make us a new inlet down by cape hatteras thats 20feet deep and 100 feet across -- so enjoy getting over there if you ever wana go there anytime soon ... this hurricane wasn't 'pathetic' and i'm just here venting because i had to do so much **** to clean up after it!
later,
- rob

 

This post is in honor of all the people that lost their lives during Isabel. ---- no more flaming the hurricane, last time i checked, when people die-- its serious -- not a joke --
later

 

yea, like 25-35 people died? harsh... Im still w/o power but It really didnt seem bad at all, my mother had 2 trees blow over in germantown

-shahul

 

i don't think they were doubting the power of the hurricane, however they were referring to hype, of it Here in the dc metro area. that is what i was refferring to.

 

Isabel, the *****.

I doubted this storm from landfall until it got close to Richmond.

Lost power Thu night at around 6pm, came back on today at 5:30 pm (Sat).

I have 4 trees resting on my roof (crane coming tomorrow or Monday to remove them), one that crashed into my dining room (that we were sitting in - scared the **** out of us) and broke up the edge of the roof.

Part of my driveway got washed out.

My neighbor has a tree IN his attic. My other neighbor had 10 downed trees in his back yard.

My partner at work has a 18" tall 2003 Mazda MPV (100 yr old oak found it). He also has HALF of a house, due to the other 100 yr old oak. No one was hurt.

A man in Chesterfield had a tree hit his house the night of the storm. He went out to investigate, heard a tree falling behind him, turned around to see it. A branch broke off the tree on his house, slid down the roof, impaled and beheaded him.

Another man on the other side of Richmond was killed in his car, driving, by a falling tree.

This storm was no joke. My neighborhood looks like HELL. I will never doubt a hurricane again - neither should anyone else.

Consider yourselves lucky you did not feel the wrath of this storm.


BTW, EVO safe in the garage

 

yeah, i'm not doubting the power of the storm or anything, its just how overhyped it was. place i'm living didn't lose power at all. it flickered, but never went out. i even had a decent water flow afterwards. the water still needs to be boiled and ****, but its back to normal. and mall was open regular hours today, so i only lost out on about 8 hours of work, so not too big a dent in my paycheck. but 5 minutes down the road from me had no power from thursday night till about friday morning.

hey, nasdale, i'm in the huntington area and there wasn't too much damage down this way. couple of branches, 1 tree that i know of, and 1 cable down on the adjacent street AFAIK. and the cleanup after the storm definitely sucked, but my older brother, who i rent a room from, cleaned it up while i was at work.

and i definitely feel remorse for the people who lost their lives during this storm, and my heart goes out to their families. hopefully it will be quite a few more years till another one hits. third one i've been around, this time it wasn't one that ruined a vacation.

 

Hey xjapx, I was riding around over off the GW Parkway, near Collingwood road and saw at least a couple of dozen trees down.
Overall we didn't get hit hit hard up in NOVA, except for the flooding. I'm not mad that we didn't either, I saw the damage in S.C. after Hugo and in Florida after Andrew, I don't want none of that!!!!
I started to cut down a tree in my front yard today, not gonna wait for the next storm to do it for me .

 

yeah, i was in florida at disney world with my family two days before andrew hit. the rains and storms during that were insane. i was on the beach at nags head during whatever hurricane it was in 99 or 200, can't remember. we were evacuated. the areas bordering the potomac were definitely hit harder then my area. i'm about 10 minutes west of old town, alexandria, off telegraph, and all we got was a couple inches of rain. i'm definitely happy nothign more then that got me though.

 

Yup...I remember Andrew...my grandmother lived in Cutler Ridge, right where the eye came over...now THAT was a hurricane!!! You haven't experienced power until you've had an entire coconut palm tree crash through the wall of your living room at 150 MPH! Andrew leveled whole towns!!!

I feel bad for you guys down on the coast, but up here in the DC area, Isabel was WAY overhyped...I guess they wanted to err on the side of caution.

 

I don't know if anybody saw it but I know it was reduced to a tropical storm by the time it hit DC and the surrounding areas (about 60mph winds instead of the 100+ that it hit NC and the southern portions of VA with). Not that I'm an expert or anything but that's what I expected personally. I just think they never seem to get too far north or inland before becoming tropical storms. I just consider us lucky in NoVa and the other places that were further down the path.

Now I need to check on a friend of mine in Hampton, VA since I haven't heard from him since and I don't know if he's without power or whatever else.

 

I was in no way trying to bash the storm or any lives that were lost. I was refferring to the paranoia that is always in the dc area regarding weather. I actually lost power for a couple of days also, but i didnt actually see any real damage.

as a sidenote, I was in Miami for hurricane andrew, just outside the path of the center of the eye.. now that was a bad storm.. no power for a couple of weeks, couple days without water, entire roofs blown off houses and found down the street, it was bad.

 

Do people here not realize that the media HAS to hype up storms like this? I mean, even with all the hype this storm got, people didn't get prepared until the very last minute.

If they placed no emphasis on the possible danger of this type of storm, lots of people would have been seriously caught off guard.

SC~

 

true, the media needs to hype it up, but no matter what they do, you will still have people that ignore everything. a lot of people in belle haven ignored the evacuation until water started coming into their homes. it was in the paper.

 

I'm still without power or telephone what.....6 days later? I'm glad it wasn't a ful blown hurricane when it came through here because there would have been a large loss of life. As it is there was a lot of damage in the outer banks as well as va beach and coastal areas of the chesapeake bay. I drove though a town yesterday (poquoson, va) delivering ice to people who lost everything to flood waters. It was sick, these are poor people struggling to make it by on a normal day and now they lost everything to this "weak" storm. You drive down the street and all there possesions are sitting on by the street. very sad