Stay safe. Bracing for the wind....

(photo courtesy of Andy's Friends Cat Rescue, from Facebook).

Sandy has blown into Tioga County. The wind is high but not raging. They tell us that the worst will come between 9pm (soon!) and 1 am, so I'm trying to print off as much as I can for my job, before I get nailed by the pretty-much-inevitable power outage.

The images coming from Manhattan are frightening. The subways are flooded. A facade has collapsed in Chelsea, leaving apartments wide open to the weather and the street. A crane dangles from a skyscraper. Frightening. And this was all before landfall. Sandy is now on shore.

Here I've taken some steps for safety. The bathtub and every available vessel is full of water. The big barn door is propped on both sides, hopefully to keep it from being blown off. The food in the small freezer has been moved to help pack the chest freezer and hopefully keep it cold if the power goes out. My neighbors have offered their freezer (run by generator) if the power stays out too long. Old food has been tossed. I hauled 30 gallons of kerosene from the VanEtten gas station for my fuel tank. The VanEtten station is out of gas. Spencer still had some when I checked in with them.

I've put food out in the barn and opened the chicken coop (it has no chickens, just hay) in case any lost or displaced critters need a place to go. I picked up everything I could from the barn floor in case the stream jumps the bank and comes flowing down the road again.

Depending on how the streams look, I'll bring the big mower up to the house tomorrow. They say we won't get as much rain as we did during Irene---but far more wind. I bought extra cat food and litter, and have my travel water bowls out. The cat seem oblivious, luckily, although I'm sure they will be getting nervous in the cat facility once the wind really begins to roar.

My only real fear is the big tree by the house. If it should ever go down, no matter where it goes, it will likely wipe something out. The house, the barn, or my car. So once the wind escalates, I'm moving into the furthest section of the house, just in case. I've never experienced 70mph winds before, and I don't know if the tree has, either.

I think, given the continued storms we have been having, it's time for me to take that tree down.

Back to work email. I'm trying to clear out as much as I can, because if I lose power (and I'm sure that's inevitable at some point) my ability to work on the computer will last only a half hour before the battery backup runs out on the router upstairs.

Stay safe, everyone!