The Machinery of Night

Beware the Purple Swirly!

UPDATE: Now with an image link to the dreaded purple swirly.

By the way, we're fairly confident that the hurricane was a non-event in our part of town. Laurence Simon, who lives well east of us, has been blogging up a storm (har), and reports that it was all a big nothin' where he was. (Stirring portapotty post linked there, by the way.)

Niles noticed that, in the satellite image the cable news networks have been showing, the purple swirly part of the hurricane never got west of Galveston Bay. If I could, I'd post the storm total precipitation map, which shows that the precipitation drops sharply just east of I-45 (the end of which runs along the west side of Galveston Bay). East of 45, they got something like 2-4 inches of rain; about ten miles to the west, there was less than an inch. In other words, the purple swirly bit of the hurricane packs the most punch. Fear it!

Niles called our answering machine today and it picked up, meaning that we still have phone and power.

So, given the testimonies of those sources, we figure we got off pretty light at home. I look forward to unwrapping everything we wrapped in plastic (the TV, the computers, the windows), and putting everything back in its place. I imagine, though, that will be little items that were tucked away in "safe" places that we'll never find again.