The Kitchen Monkey

Well, we have officially survived Hurricane Irene, the first hurricane to make landfall on the US since Ike hit Texas in September of 2008. I personally couldn't believe it's been that long since the US has been hit by a hurricane, but apparently it's true.

We pretty much escaped unharmed here in my development with only a couple small pine trees down and smallish limbs. There was no flooding that I could tell, which honestly surprised me a bit. I made sure to park my car in a spot that was both up hill, and protected from trees that could potentially hit it. Bryan did the same. We did this simply because our assigned parking spots are on the bottom of a steep-ish hill that we didn't trust to drain properly having never been through a serious rain event living here. Much to our surprise, there was never any free standing water where our cars would have been!

We began seeing the outer bands of Irene around 3pm on Friday afternoon, which you can see here. As the evening progressed, the wind and rain got steadily stronger. I was kept up most of the night by the howling wind ripping through the trees behind our house. I was incredibly paranoid about one of those trees snapping off and coming right into our bedroom while we slept. Needless to say... I got about 2 hours of sleep all night.

When we woke up Saturday morning around 7:30, we oddly still had power. I suggested that we get up as quickly as possibl and make a hot breakfast and coffee while we still could. We enjoyed our meal, cleaned up, then set up camp in the living room to weather the storm.

We surprisingly kept power and internet until around lunch time. However, when the power did go out, the eye had just barely made landfall near Cape Lookout on the OBX, meaning that the worst was yet to come for us in Greenville. I stayed glued to the window as I received Twitter updates from @wunderground and @twc_hurricane as the eye moved northward up the NC coast. The worst of the winds and rain hit us sometime between 2-3pm. It was rather crazy to watch. I kept expecting the tall pine trees outside to snap as they whipped back and forth in the gusts. Thankfully, they didn't.

When the worst of the winds began to subside, the lack of sleep from the night before and all the nervous excitement got the best of me. I then proceeded to take a massive 5 hour nap, waking up at almost 9pm (to power and internet, no less)! How I was still able to go to sleep on Saturday night is beyond a miracle to me.

Sunday morning, Bryan and I decided to hop on our bikes and head down towards the downtown and campus area to survey the damage. Wow. It was pretty incredible. While most of the flood waters had receded close to the Tar River, there were trees down everywhere. While the damage that we got was relatively higher than what I've experienced during cat 1 hurricanes while living in Wilmington, I am assuming this was due to the fact that Greenville hasn't had seriously high winds to thin out the weaker trees in over a decade. These things make a HUGE difference in the amount of damage done during a single weather event. I feel a lot better going into this hurricane season knowing that many of the weaker trees have now been removed, leaving the stronger trees. While I don't want to experience anything stronger than Irene, I'll have some peace of mind.

Here are some select photos from around Greenville to show the damage. They are mostly from ECU's campus, along 5th street, and in the student housing district that lies between 5th and the Tar River.