It turns out that the earthquake the other day was just a distraction from the impending hurricane which has already caused more devastation than that little shake.
Hurricane Irene is shaping up to be the worst in decades. It's already come ashore in the Carolinas and is heading through Virginia on its way to Philadelphia, New York City and Long Island, Boston and points north. Normally, hundreds of miles inland as I am, even if a hurricane got that close it wouldn't be much of a problem. But Irene is huge, hundreds of miles across, big enough that even now the very edges of it are making themselves felt where we are. The forecast is for likely tropical storm conditions tonight where we are - meaning strong winds and lots and lots of rain.
So Mrs Walles and I are hunkering down. She grew up on Long Island which, because it sticks out into the Atlantic, catches more hurricanes than much of the mainland. So she knows what to do. We've secured everything outside, stocked up on food and water, and in the (extremely unlikely) event that we need to retreat to the basement we've got that in a habitable state.
Realistically we're most worried about flooding and power cuts. So if you don't hear from me, it's less likely that I've been blown away and more likely that the internet has been cut off. Which doesn't sound good either - but is definitely the lesser of two evils!
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