It’s noon on Saturday, and Grace, so far, is very unimpressed.  “This is just a rain storm…” she stated with disgust.  This is my “extreme weather” daughter who has watched all of the weather-related videos available on NetFlix several times, and loves to check Weather.com first thing every morning.  Greatly anticipating her weather.com debut, her plan is to record our extreme hurricane experience to post on weather.com.  Alas, nothing we are experiencing so far is worthy. 

The wind is picking up – the internet has gone out once, but came back up.  A smallish branch has fallen from our neighbor’s pecan tree (loaded with pecans), and our oak has dropped a small branch as well.  The news is telling us that we are having 65 mph gusts.  I’m not sure we’re quite there yet. 

The tide is going out, so while the water will not completely recede, it does go down a bit, which is just a tad reassuring.  High tide is tonight a little after nine p.m.  Might be a little tricky getting a photo…;)

We have a leak in the Living Room.  Every storm brings us a new adventure in caulking, and the leak shifts to a new hiding place each time.  It’s a game of cat and mouse, and you know how that goes!  The mouse usually wins!  The other typical places aren’t leaking yet…

The National Hurricane Center’s 2 pm report and the newest track of the storm seems to indicate that Irene is not taking the Northeasterly turn we were counting on.  For the last three hours, it has moved North, but not east.  Norfolk is directly north of Irene’s current eye location.  This is not good news because it will push more water up into the bay which equates to worse flooding, we’ll have more rain and the worst winds.  Our hope is that the eye will turn easterly and actually be off coast when she moves past our area.   

We take comfort in the knowledge that our house has been here since 1919, and weathered worse storms than this!  Our generator will keep our sump pump going, although, so far, the basement is still quite dry even after several inches of rain in the last few hours.  This is very different from previous storms. 

For some pictures of what downtown Norfolk looks like, you can check www.wtkr.com.   Remember that the media thrives on drama and will show only the most extreme situations.  Downtown Norfolk, is very low, in some cases lower than sea level, so it is a little worse than where we are, see below.