House in a Storm (Sandy LINKS)

I doubt I was the only home-owner that was catapulted from their bed this morning with the need to check on every shingle and tree branch.  For the most part, it looks like we made it through ok.  There was a small leak in our bedroom that came through the back wall, but that stopped dripped sometime through the night.  I was up until 12:30 listening to the wind and examining every decibel for sounds of retreating roofing material.  It is too dark to tell for certain, but everything seems whole.  In fact, the whole neighborhood seems whole, except for maybe the Halloween skeleton poised to climb through the ground of my neighbor's yard.  That guy is probably in Pittsburgh.

I don't have much else to say for now.  I hope you all are safe, warm, and with power.

LINKS

"Millions of gallons" of raw sewage from a facility in Savage are overflowing into the Little Patuxent River as the power used to pump the sewage uphill to the treatment plant was lost.  Officials are not sure when the overflow will be able to be stopped.  One can only hope that the environmental impact of this kind of disaster is somewhat mediated by the heavy rains, but I doubt it.  Unfortunately, this is not Howard County's first run-in with waste-water overflow, and we actually had to settle a claim with the Maryland Department of the Environment back in 2010 regarding a similar event.  One of the provisions of that 2010 settlement was to draft an "Overflow Emergency Response Plan".  Should come in handy today.

The bottom of Main Street was evacuated last night with flooding expected for most of the buildings near the Baltimore County line.  Our brave little city on the hill.

Over 300,000 Marylanders will wake up without power this morning.  Keep them in your thoughts while drinking your morning Joe.

Here's how a good part of New York City lost power yesterday.  Scary:


With blizzards in Western Maryland, Gov. O'Malley suggested that just as we are "America in miniature" we are experiencing this hurricane "in miniature."  Too soon, Governor.  Too soon.  Get some sleep.

Featured Blog Post of the Day: Make sure to check out the posts WB is able to get up between power outages.  The added value of weather-station Wordbones (WSw) is worth the click alone.

That's all for today.  Have a great day doing...whatever it is your house-bound heart desires.