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Thankfully, we made it through the storm with relatively little damage and (for me) no power loss. Irene brought very strong winds and driving rains. This I had expected and had prepared myself both with the supplies and mind. It wasn’t until the TV sounded the ear piecing emergency alarm and didn’t follow it with “this is a test”, that was a little unnerving. They were alerting us to a tornado watch, at the same time the lighting flashed through the angry sky and the thunder rolled. The storm raged on throughout the night.

This morning we awoke to calmer winds and a light rain. The storm had started to break and weaken. The first thing I did, text Phriend. Our hopes were to reach the boardwalk and ocean. We had heard the bridge to the barrier island remained closed but to our surprise as we approached we noticed cars crossing. We found most of the roads were flooded making many impassable. It was impossible to reach our, often photographed, boardwalk. We could have parked and walked but for safety reasons, we settled on photographing the surrounding area. Currently, the wind has picked back up reaching near 60mph, this along with the saturated ground is making it easy for trees to come down.