The year of natural disasters

What a year it has been. On April 27, the place I called home for 6 years (not to mention several other places around my home state of Alabama) was hit by several tornadoes. I didn't get to see the damage in Tuscaloosa until October, and by that time most of the crumbled buildings had been leveled for rebuilding. It was still crazy to see all that had taken place in a matter of minutes.

Then in June a tornado hit Springfield, Mass.--about 15 minutes from my house. While this was nothing compared to the ones in Alabama, a lot of damage was done. People are still recovering here--and most of these people have never been near a tornado.

Moving on to August, Hurricane Irene made her way up the East Coast, downgraded to a tropical storm and swept through New England. That was an interesting weekend. Our dear friends Aaron and Amanda tied the knot about an hour from where we live. Several members of their wedding party got stranded at the wedding site as the storm hit the night and day after the wedding. A&A made it to their honeymoon location in the Berkshires safely, but had to do some plan-changing due to weather and power outages.

I was working for a paper in Connecticut at the time, and Monday morning I had to drive around my towns taking pictures and talking with people about what they experienced. The damage was mostly in downed power lines, but flooding was a major problem in parts of Mass and especially Vermont. We usually take a paddling trip with Brett & Jenna over Labor Day weekend, but we decided to change our plans slightly and do some relief work that weekend instead. We borrowed a friend's condo at Sugarbush Resort and worked in two nearby Vermont towns.

One of those was Waterbury where a fabulous restaurant called The Alchemist is. Andrew and our friends like it because they brew good beer. I like it because the food is great, and it's fun to see my friends and husband get really excited about things they like. Because of the flooding, the restaurant lost everything. We cleaned out a house next door, so we stopped by to grab some pics at the end of the day.

We didn't get any pictures of the places we worked, but we helped out at one home and one restaurant. At the home, we did things like pick up glass, spray mud off wood, rebuild a woodshed, clean floors, etc. At the restaurant, Andrew and I worked under the foundation to shovel mud from around the structural pillars (can't think of the correct terminology for this) so they could dry out. We were pretty nasty by the day's end.

If all of those events weren't enough, we then get to October. If I am remembering correctly, on the Thursday before Halloween we got a tiny bit of snow. You can see it here on my car:

But then on October 29-30 we had a nor'easter come through leaving at least 10 inches of snow in our town and tons of downed trees and power lines. I took some pics of when it started on Saturday, then Andrew and I put on our snow clothes and went to take pictures Sunday morning. Here are some pictures from our neighborhood:

 Saturday

Saturday

 Sunday morning

Our street

I took nearly 50 pictures that morning, so if you want to see more, check out my Facebook page. We had so much damage because the trees hadn't lost all of their leaves yet. Where we live, the snow was very heavy and wet, breaking tons of branches. I think most everyone in Mass had power back by the following Saturday, but in Connecticut some people went 10 days or more without power. We were lucky enough to be without it for only about 48 hours, and we had friends with power who let us crash. 

I almost forgot--somewhere in there (end of summer, maybe?) we also felt a mini-earthquake! What will the last month and a half of 2011 hold for New England?