Hurricane Irene Soaks Upstate New York Basement and Bravado

FIRST PERSON | Hurricane Irene, my husband and I thought, was going to be all hype in Rensselaer County, our corner of Upstate, New York, about 2.5 hours north of New York City. We weren't worried.

After all, we spent three years in Raleigh, N.C., and knew a thing or two about hurricanes. We'd survived Hurricane Floyd in 1999.

Floyd was a major weather event and a Category 4 hurricane. North Carolina was left with serious flooding and estimated damages near $6 billion. By contrast, Hurricane Irene was a measly Category 1 when she headed our way late on Saturday.

We were confident she'd be downgraded to a tropical storm before she got here. After all, we were experienced in this hurricane business.

We were wrong.

By the time Hurricane Irene hit NYC, the outer bands of rain were reaching us from a pitch-black sky. Along with them came a moderate wind.

As the storm progressed, the rain was far from moderate.

My husband and I found ourselves tossed from our hurricane know-it-all pedestal when our basement began to flood. Accuweather states that Albany, N.Y., a nearby city, accumulated 3.52 inches of rain as of mid-afternoon on Sunday. And, it was still raining.

The water started to rise in our basement a few hours before lunchtime. It was pouring into our laundry room quickly and branching out into other areas of our basement. I had a moment of panic. There were still hours of storm left. How bad was this going to get?

We opened a drain on our laundry room floor and mopped up standing water in the storage room. This kept the water from deepening while my husband dug a trench near the worst of the flooded areas in the backyard to divert water away from our foundation.

He also climbed on the roof to clean the gutters.

Yes, that's right. In the middle of Hurricane Irene, my husband was finally doing the long-overdue task of cleaning the gutters. By then, the wind was minimal, so he felt it was worth the risk to get the gutters working efficiently.

We gave our children the chore of pushing water with a mop towards the laundry room drain. Our oldest child unhooked the computer equipment in the finished portion of the basement and lifted it off the floor.

Soon, the gutters were flowing freely and the trench slowed down the water entering the house to almost non-existent levels. We still have to deal with the existing water and ride out the rest of the storm, but we feel fortunate that nothing expensive or vital was damaged, save our pride.

Sources:

WTEN, "Flooding Advisories in NY, MA, VT", Channel 10 Albany, NY

North Carolina State University, "Hurricane Floyd, September 1999", National Weather Service, Raleigh, NY

"Extended Forecast, Albany, NY", Accuweather