weather

So the line of storms that caused flooding and tornadoes in the Midwest a few days ago has made its way to the east coast. It's used up a good deal of its strength on the way here, but it's still not to be trifled with. While shalmestere and I were in Pennsylvania at an SCA event, the storms hit Queens fairly hard, dropping two inches of rain in 45 minutes. As of this writing, the Long Island Expressway is closed in both directions in eastern Queens due to flooding, and that area (about a mile east of us, I guess) has flooded basements and first floors, cars that were picked up by the flood and moved down the street, exploding manhole covers, etc.

Our trip home from the SCA event was basically uneventful -- rainy, but unremarkable -- until we got to within a block of our home, when we started to see the police tape.

As shalmestere puts it, there is now a tree in our front yard that was standing on the other side of the street this morning.
( pictures )

weather update

Now that there's some daylight, I walked around the neighborhood taking some better pictures. All of these are within three blocks of our house.

( pictures in daylight )

Note that our neighborhood has a lot of big trees, and there seems no rhyme or reason to which ones came down and which still look perfectly fine.

weather

Walked around neighborhood taking pictures of downed trees. No damage to dogs, our house, or anybody we know, although the house 3 doors down lost an awning and a mailbox. Very localized; microburst?

Ordered glasses for both of us.