Hurricane Irene

Update See below:

For those of you who are not local to the Research Triangle area in North Carolina and have been wondering about our experiences with Hurricane Irene, I have a few photos of the aftermath here in the Triangle. For the most part, in Cary Hurricane Irene gave us a fairly breezy rainy day. For those of us who secretly look forward to hurricanes it was a bit of a letdown. But it was not without some effects:

A tree branch fell on my car...

hurricane irene branch on car, a photo by bigleehimself on Flickr.

And a home in our neighborhood was blown off its foundations...

hurricane irene home off foundations, a photo by bigleehimself on Flickr.

Fortunately, I have seen the affected homeowners this morning and they are already at work rebuilding after yesterday's storm.

Update: 30 August 2011

It's been a funny week. I posted this joke about a tree limb falling and the next day we had a thunderstorm come through and about an hour after the storm was over the tree I was writing about dropped about a ton of broken wood and wet leaves at the end of our driveway. The teleospouse and I had gone out for a late supper when our next door neighbor called to say a big branch had fallen but missed the car. I didn't get any photos of the branch where it fell because we had to saw it up and move it last night so we could get the cars out this morning. Here's where the branch broke off:

the break, a photo by bigleehimself on Flickr.

Now that the branch it gone it is easy to see the bit of yellow insulation that hung up in the tree when a tornado destroyed a Lowe's Home Improvement store this past spring and spread bits of debris over the whole county. It's about 25 feet off the ground and well beyond the reach of my ladder so it will be there for a while.

split tree and insulation, a photo by bigleehimself on Flickr.

I wish I had gotten better shots of the pile-o-wood but I only had a minute to snap a shot or two on my way out the door to go to work. Here's the wife bundling up some of the leafy bits for the yard waste pickup. This pile she is standing behind is about 1/3 of the cut up branch.

irene cuts up, a photo by bigleehimself on Flickr.

The tree in question, by the way, is a Bradford Pear. A Bradford Pear is a very poorly engineered tree -- after it is about eight years old it will have grown more heavy foliage that its relatively fragile wood can support. They are famous for falling apart in the wind or an ice storm. They are one of the things I offer as proof of the existence of God; a poorly engineered tree requires a spotty engineer. The obvious mistakes in the way the tree was made seem to require a creator having an off day.