With the possibility of a direct hit from Hurricane Irene, a mandatory evacuation is in place for the areas of the state along the ocean, inland bays, Delaware Bay, and Delaware River up to New Castle and Wilmington.
I did not drive all the way down to the beach towns because the evacuation traffic coming up was too much. I did visit some of the bay communities and low-lying communities of Kent County to see how things looked before Irene arrived. Delaware has never took a direct hit from the center of a hurricane before, but several storm centers have come within a few miles of the state, most recently Hurricane Floyd in 1999.
It looks like we made it through with relatively little damage (so far). There was a tornado in the Lewes area last night as the eye passed by, and a neighborhood was destroyed. Flooding is still going on around the state as creeks and small rivers are up to 4 feet over flood stage, but no reposrts of storm surge coming onto land that I know of.
It's pretty much done. The wind is still gusting and we're getting a little bit of rain but the eye of the storm passed by Fenwick Island sometime around 4 AM or 5 AM. My unofficial rainfall amount (via an industrial bucket that I put outside) indicates almost a foot of rain fell overnight.
Some pictures this morning from Bethany Beach, all from The News Journal
Wow, that's a lot of water in the second set of pics. The remnants of the hurricane knocked out power and downed some trees in Quebec, but all we got up here in Ottawa was a very grey and windy day.
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Hurricanes are categorized by wind only, but the threat from Irene wasn't wind. Flooding and possible storm surge were the main concerns. Obviously any rain-making storm could do something this bad, but Irene had what it took to give the area 4, 5, 6, up to 10 inches (up to 25.4 cm) overnight.
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