I am from Greenwich, CT, so I am very acquainted with hurricanes. The first hurricane that I remember was also the hurricane that did the most damage to my house, hurricane Irene. Hurricane Irene happened in late August, 2011, and hit my home town sometime on the 28th of August. Irene was actually only a category 3 hurricane, which is not the strongest hurricane that hit Connecticut, but for me it was the most memorable. Greenwich was directly in the path of the Hurricane and had some of the highest flood indexes according to the Journal of Hydrometeorology. Below you can see the path that the hurricane took and the flood index.
I was only 7 years old when hurricane Irene hit Connecticut, so I didn’t really understand the severity of a hurricane and couldn’t quite understand why everyone was freaking out over a little rain. My complete lack of concern was solidified when the rain got to us before we really felt any of the winds. On the first night of the hurricane being over Connecticut I remember going to bed and being woken up by a really loud sound. I was convinced that someone had dropped something really big — which was technically right in a way, expect that thing was a tree and it had fallen (just barely) on our house. The tree belonged to our neighbor across the street, it was so large that it crossed the street and our front yard just to nick our house. In the end there actually wasn’t that much damage, which I will never really understand because it was a huge tree and the trunk had a diameter of about 3-4 feet, but all it did was mess up our roof a bit. Since I had no idea how much roofs cost to replace, I was far more annoyed by the fact that the tree brought down the power lines with it and was blocking our road so we wouldn’t be able to drive anywhere for quite a while. The part that really amused me was that it was our neighbors tree, and they had just sold the house to a couple who really loved that tree and were very very disappointed that it was not there when they moved in.
Somehow, despite the tree falling right in front of our house, I remember the damage from flooding a lot more. After the storm our basement had about 5 inches of water in it, which is honestly kind of astounding. Our basement is particularly prone to flooding, but it wasn’t a problem that only we faced. I remember after the hurricane had passed we weren’t allowed to swim at the beach for quite a while because the water was deemed to have unsafe levels of bacteria in it. This happens because our sewage management system is designed to release sewage into Long Island Sound in the case of extreme flooding, which is really gross.
Sources:
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/hydr/17/11/jhm-d-16-0072_1.xml
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Irene
Image Source:
https://www.ctpost.com/local/article/nearly-500-000-still-without-power-after-irene-2147101.php
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