This post is a bit late and out of order, but we survived Hurricane Helene just fine.
We had some large tree branches fall in our yard, but nothing hit the house or did any significant damage. We were out of power for about 2 1/2 days, which was far less that a lot of people. Fortunately, we’d already run down the food that was in our big freezer, so we lost very little. My step-dad was an Eagle Scout growing up, so he had an old camp stove that we used to cook our meals. I used up some chicken and vegetables from our freezer by making chicken pot pie, and we used up our eggs making boil-in-a-bag omelets for breakfast.
One the second day, my sister came by and dropped off some solar-powered phone chargers, which was great! We didn’t have ethernet or wi-fi but we still had internet through our cell service. Our regular internet didn’t get restored until 9 or so days after the hurricane.
It was nice to see our neighborhood come together by checking on each other and helping with yardwork. Several houses had large trees down. Our neighborhood used to be an orchard, so there are a lot of old fruit trees and pecan trees, but most of the trees that fell were maples or pin oaks. Only one house had a tree fall directly on it and through the roof. Thankfully, the house was for sale, so no one lived there. The owners had moved out several weeks prior.
We still have plenty of debris in the neighborhood, even two months later, but, overall, we were certainly very blessed. It could have been much, much worse.
All my cats are just fine 🙂 Molly was the only one who was really freaked out by the storm, so I kept her in a little while longer than everyone else. The rest of the horde enjoyed investigating all the debris in the yard and climbing on the fallen branches, especially my newest kitty, Bonnie, who was only about 5 months old at the time.