Hurricane Earl

3:30 am. I guess going to sleep at 8:30pm was a little unnecessary because now I’m up and wide awake and waiting for some hurricane action… and it is dead still outside.

‎6:00am. Foggy, so humid and sticky. 22C. Breeze is picking up.

CBC Radio out of Halifax is broadcasting full storm coverage. Brett Anderson of Accuweather was right all along and the path is much further east than everyone else was thinking until yesterday.

We aren’t expecting the full brunt of the storm, but we are supposed to get heavy winds and some rain. Our driveway washing away is our biggest concern.

6:25am – A couple raindrops. We currently have a Wind Warning and a Tropical Storm Warning.

6:34am – Interesting – while the U.S. hurricane centre has downgraded Hurricane Earl to a tropic storm, the Canadian hurricane centre is on the radio saying they still have measurements at hurricane 1 strength.

8:46am – Not much change yet. It’s breezy with a bit of rain. It is so sticky our feet are grossly sticking to the floor. The hurricane is now supposed to hit much closer to Halifax than expected and the county we are on the border of, Guysborough county, now has a hurricane watch too.

9:30am – Power outages all over the southern end of Nova Scotia. 7,900 customers out now. Jeff is outside right now trying to dig some little trenches on the driveway to divert the approaching rain off the driveway.

9:33am – Make that 11,886 customers without power now.

9:36am – Wow – 14,547 now. Please let us keep power for awhile longer!

9:51am – 27,000 without power now. Little cooler out now. Gas truck was just blown off the road somewhere near Halifax.

10am – Waves are sounding louder on our lake now. RCMP have blocked sightseers idiots from the beaches and away from Peggy’s Cove. 29,091 without power.

10:11am – First big gust. My friend Chrissy is down near where the storm is coming ashore and her poplar tree tops are almost touching the ground from the wind!

10:31am – Windier now. Canada’s Hurricane Centre said they just saw a confirmed wind of 120kph reading from offshore buoy…so Earl is still a Category 1 storm.

10:53am – 39,457 customers without power now. Sporadic strong wind gusts here and light rain. Confederation Bridge to PEI is closed to high sided tall traffic.

11:01am – Trees and powerlines down in Halifax in advance of the storm. Power apparently flickering in Antigonish. Zeus the cat is acting a little clingy. Halifax airport is reporting 74 km/hr winds now with gusts to 104 km/hr. 43,997 houses in the dark.

11:18am – Nova Scotia Power is on the radio. Some power restoration estimate times are into Monday, but will be reassessed regularly. 56,843 customers without power. Getter wetter here. I’m getting hungry. Jeff’s thinking of bbq’ing burgers. He’s a diehard bbq – no hurricane will stop him!

11:46am – Sheets of rain coming down now. 79,728 customers out of power now. Power flicked a couple times. Jeff tested out our little generator and now is plotting to run the TV & Bell satellite TV with it, alternated with the freezer, if our power goes out.

12:12pm – 111,793 without power now. We still have power. Power is out just south of us. Very close. So far it isn’t much worse here than a normal storm. Nothing compared to Hurricane Noel… yet..

12:38pm – Getting wilder here now. Our burgers were incredible. Jeff is out surveying the driveway. We haven’t got THAT much rain so it shouldn’t be too bad. 127,933 homes without power now. White birch in front of the house is getting blown pretty good now. Jeff is cheering for it to get blown down.

12:51pm – Over 400 houses without power in our neighbourhood. Luckily not us. Jeff reports that we had a bit of erosion on the driveway so far, but the trenches he dug are doing well. Some great wind gusts once in awhile.

1:07pm – I run all my computer equipment through a UPS so I have clean power. It has kicked over to battery twice in the last few minutes indicting our incoming voltage was too high or low. I’m thinking about going down to the lake to shoot some video for you. Gusts are getting serious here now. 152,892 without power, including more and more around us.

11:45am, 2 days later – And we’re back! We only lost power for 6 hours, but power was out everywhere, including to our wireless internet towers so we had no internet, until now! Check back later – I’ll post a full post-hurricane review, with photos, and video.

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Check back for updates.
If the webcam and I go offline, assume the power is out.
But you can follow Nova Scotia’s power outages online too:
http://www.nspower.ca/en/home/residential/outageinformation/liveoutagemap.aspx