Concerns about Irene's aftermath

Sending prayers for safety and positive thoughts to all those affected by the flooding aftermath of Irene. The flood map on Weather.com looks serious for NJ and many other areas. Hope everyone is OK....

I hope that everyone came out doing okay and weathered the storm without much damage. Also, I hope that the gardens and plants fared well, along with the pets.

We did fine here, just south of Wilmington, NC. The eye was to the East, so we only dealt with winds from the NNE and no more than 70 mph. All my plants fared well other than a few bigger annuals.
I've decided that hurricanes are Mother Nature telling us to rework our gardens!
Barb

Barb,

Good to hear that you all made out okay. Great for looking at the brighter side of things.

Speaking of brighter, I've decided hurricanes are Mother Natures way of telling you you need to re-do your gardens.
My deep shade sided garden is now medium shade and another area went from medium shade to light shade/sunny. Time for some rearranging! ;)
Barb

Barb, that is a great attitude. But I think I would do some wiping away of tears before I started re-planning. God bless you all. Sharon.

The only sad part is that my Mexican bird of paradise (Caesalpinia mexicana) had to be pruned back pretty hard before hand, meaning I won't see blooms for at least a month.
I had to do it since the stalks were about 6' tall, so they would have leaned over in the wind, perhaps pulling the whole plant over.
Barb

For those of you not living on the Eastern Seaboard, everything you saw on television last weekend about Irene was a Category 5 Media Event. By the time Irene’s eye-wall made landfall in North Carolina, it was a tropical storm and not a hurricane. As Tropical Storm Irene proceeded up the Eastern Seaboard, the staged television reports increasingly resembled a low budget science fiction movie as the networks struggled to maintain the narrative that Irene was a hurricane.

I am a regular user of the Weather Underground website at http://weatherunderground.com/. The Weather Underground provides real-time access to official, hobbyist, military, airports, etc weather stations across the United States. As Tropical Store Irene proceeded north, I was unable to find any stations reporting sustained wind speeds over 40 MPH if that. As live television broadcasts were made from the storm, I stated checking the local weather stations at those locations and found wind speeds of 10 to 30 MPH. The Comedy Chanel should have carried the event!

After landfall Tropical Storm Irene had low wind speeds but it did carry a lot of water. In New Jersey the locations which have been flooding for the past 200 years, not surprisingly flooded again. Floods in northern New Jersey are growing worse because more homes are being built in upriver locations which absorbed rain in the past; this is really a land use issue. The new wrinkle in this flood was the completion of the new Army Corps of Engineers flood control project for the Pompton Lakes region. Yes, the homes for which the project was designed were protected; it was everyone else who got inundated.

While the media was busy reporting on a hurricane which wasn’t, the real disaster was happening in the Catskill Mountain region of upstate New York and the Green Mountains of Vermont. When Tropical Storm Irene hit the cooler mountains, a large amount of the water it was carrying was dumped as torrential rains and that was a tragedy.

I really believe that given timely and accurate information, the public can make good decisions to minimize the loss of life and damage to property. Neither the government nor the media reported on the changing state of Irene because they were fixated on a hurricane and failed to report that conditions had changed. For any farmer or gardener, weather is critical. If you are not already doing so, learn how to use the advanced features in the Weather Underground to tap into local weather stations. When you see a weather report on television, use the Weather Underground to fact-check the information which is being presented.

To the original question which was asked on this thread, my Hibiscus’ response to Irene was mixed. Any Hibiscus with open flowers sustained varying degrees of damage and the flower stalks were usually broken. Buds and seed pods were generally not damaged by the wind and rain. My Hibiscus grandiflorus, which is a late summer bloomer and a Florida native, started opening flowers like crazy; it must have though it was back home. Some Hibiscus species which had been blooming stopped, while others which had stopped blooming were re-invigorated and resumed blooming. For other Hibiscus, there was no impact at all. As the sustained winds in my area never went over 30 MPH there was little wind damage. Trees which did fall, did so because they were saturated with water and the ground was soft from the rain.

Mike





This message was edited Sep 3, 2011 1:17 PM

Mike, I agree about the crazy exaggeration the News and Weather channel does when reporting these events. My husband and I were out and about during the storm. Driving wind and rain - yes; but still, not a life threatening event if you took basic precautions!
My hibiscus handled things well and are now blooming better than they have all season. Having to move them into, then out of the greenhouse was actually a good thing. I saw that several needed potting up, so they are also happier.
Barb

We are now getting some wind and mostly heavy rain from TS Lee. It is sad to see the media circus over a potential tragic event.

The danger with all the media hype is that one day where will be a wolf at the door and no one is going to believe the media because they have been crying wolf too often.. The answer is that we must develop information source which can be trusted and then share those sources with our families, friends and neighbors.

The lesson of Katrina has been ignored, New Orleans survived Katrina; it did not survive the Army Corps of Engineers and their political enablers. The real sideshow of Irene is only beginning; all of the political piglets are now lining up to get the choice places at the federal teat. Be ready to today’s media event from New Jersey, you are going to see pictures flooding on a biblical scale. Fortunately Teleprompters are not waterproof so no one will be walking on water.

Mike


This message was edited Sep 4, 2011 9:07 AM

Hey Michael, didn't you see me walking across the Passaic when it crested?????????? I read with interest your account of the NJ damage and you have some of it very accurate. The wind did much less damage than those many inches of rain did. Especially in your Northern area. That water had no place to go and as you said many people built homes in places that were flood zones already. You still have to feel sorry for them, except when they really begin to complain, then I just turn them off.

I am not sure where I live in NJ because some say I am in South , some say Central, so I say South Central. We were so lucky to have only lost our electric for 19 hours and had to have 6 old locust trees removed, one came down and others were topped, but they were old and ready to be removed anyhow. Irene just made it easier to get the tree man to come sooner. We are still cleaning up and the barns were spared as those trees lost their limbs. Some of our neighbors were not so lucky, they were out of electric for 5 days and their crops took a real beating. The Horse People, of which I am one, had problems getting water during the time without electric, but we are a group of persistent people and we make things happen , even walking on water at times.

I thought you were describing my hibiscus after the storm. I had the guys carry it in to the greenhouse because I had just transplanted it and the new growth was just coming out from some hard pruning. Now, since he is in the GH the blooms are popping out all over. He is over 5 ft. tall trimmed and one of these days I am just gong to let him die, but until then, I pamper him like the rest of them.

Stay dry up there in Nutley the rest of the week. More rain is coming and I am sure if you are like we are here, there is plenty of water in the soil. We have a Christmas Tree farm also and those trees just sucked up that rain and look great. There is always a positive to some negatives. Have a great day. JB Thanks for the link to the weather.....I will definitely check it out.

Although Irene was downgraded as a Tropical Storm, we got hit real hard. The damages to my town and neighboring towns was extensive. Two dozen homes were completely dragged into the ocean, not leaving a trace. Connecticut had much help from all over the country with the electric companies. Parking lots were jam packed with utility trucks from Michigan, Washington, Illinois... to name a few. We were without power until this weekend, some still without power. Here is our local paper article with some photos. http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2011/08/28/news/doc4e57dae2eabc7402249425.txt

As far as a jump start for blooms, I totally agree. My plants bursted! Irene brought real nice whether afterward. Now it is just raining!

JBerger....do you have a name for that hibiscus? I have the same one, and have not been able to find a name for it. It's a beautiful color, with the double petals!

MerryMary, I think that is hysterical, no, I took that plant from my SIL's Father when it got too big for him to put in the house in the winter. I have had it for about 4 years and each year I threaten to throw it out because if I leave it go it would be 6 ft. tall. I keep cutting it back and sell or trade cuttings completely without a name. It is so pretty no one really cares what it's name is, they just want it. : ) Sorry. JB

No worries, ha! I have 4 of them along a fence, and was going to get rid of them because they just wouldn't get bigger than 2-3 feet. BUT, like always when you threaten a plant with the compost pile, it decides to kick it up and notch and force you to change your mind! This summer, they went crazy and are at least 6 feet, and the double blooms are beautiful! Not quite salmon, not quite pink...but definitely outstanding!

Do you want me to send you some rooted cuttings of this one? Then you could make a stockade fence out of them.
I wish we could ID this plant. I have sold several of them. I also have a friend in SC who wanted some rooted cuttings and I had them all ready to go prior to the hurricane and earthquake last week, but the weather was so hot I hesitated to ship them. I sat them in the greenhouse on the floor with some other starter plants and after the clean up was completed I told her I would get them in the mail immediately. I could not find them, and I searched everywhere and finally I saw two 3" pots with little sticks about three inches tall in them and they were marked salmon hibiscus. I picked them up and sure enough, that was them................something got in the GH during the time the doors were open and shut one day and ate the tops off of both of them. Nothing else was touched, so they must be as good tasting as they are pretty. Can you imagine? I have no idea was it a rabbit, groundhog or the old barn cat who eats greens. JB

Apparently something else enjoys them as much as WE do! :)
Hope everything for you has gone semi back to normal, after Irene.....Being a Floridian, I certainly understand the post-hurricane(s) aftermath....blah.
I saw on tonight's news there's something out there a'brewin' again.....yipes....

I thought I heard something like that but I figured if I ignored it , it may just go away. Katia is going to miss us thanks to Lee being on the West side of us. That and the jet stream in the position it is in, she can not come ashore in NJ.Thank you Lord. I have felt Blah, but I thought it was just me. Now I know it happens to others too.

Must be out of here for tonight. News and weather time. See you later. Stay well , safe and dry if you can. JB