I was able to return home Wed. when the flood waters receeded. I had water to about 24" -36" throughout the neighborhood, maybe a little higher. I have not yet measured the high water mark, but it was about 2" below the top of my crawl space access hatch. The crawl space was flooded, but the water is mostly gone. There is nothing in there but wiring and ductwork hanging from the ceiling of the crawl so as long as there are no tears in the ductwork, I should be ok. I still need to slither under there and check things out but I'm waiting for it to dry out a little more.

Still there are puddles of deep water here and there. My pilel of firewood is scattered all over the yard, tree limbs, branches, and a few trashcans worth of pine cones and pine needles are everywhere, but it's still too wet to go out and clean up. There is a tree down behind my house, but it's not my tree, and it didn't hit any houses. My office mate lost 5 trees. I was lucky, no water entered my house, and the windows and sliding door are intact.

The highway that runs along the coast has been closed since Sunday due first to deeop water on the road, and then millions of pounds of sand. About 1/2 mile of dune was lost and relocated on the highway. They do not expect it to be cleared, inspected, and ready to reopen until Monday. This affects the residents of all the neighboring towns because there is a 20 mile detour to go around. My normal route to work is 13 miles, now it's 32 slow agonizing miles in bumper to bumper traffic for 20 miles of 2 lane road with lots of traffic lights. Last night it took me almost 2 hours to get home from work!

Many homes nearby, but not in my neighborhood, were not so lucky - 2-3' of water inside. Fortunately it's a resort community, most of these houses are 2nd homes, but still it's a terrible loss to go through this. My heart really goes out to those who have lost everything. Having lost an entire house and contents to fire a few years ago, I have some experience with this. I've had many scuba diving trips off of Long Beach Island - I really feel for all of those people who have lost their homes. Well everywhere. I had one friend whose car was flooded (totaled), and siding ripped off her house, but is otherwise OK. We lost power where I was staying for about 18 hours, but don't seem to have lost any power at my own house; some clocks were blinking, but my kitchen clock radio, and stove clocks had the correct time. I have had some brief DSL outages but they seemed to be measured in minutes, not hours.

LOL - my biggest inconvenience is that I ordered a new Kindle Fire, and it's been delayed by the storm, but it might show up today.