Hurricane Kyle

September 28, 2008 was the date Kyle came ashore in Nova Scotia, just north of Yarmouth. The heaviest winds seem to have been in Shelburne - 154 km/hr gusts.

In Lockeport, we had lots of wind, very little rain and not very much damage. Shelburne, on the other hand, had a building under construction (a new office for Harlow construction) demolished - it was at the stage of roof closed in but the walls were open studs and the wind just lifted the roof off. It was fairly large - probably at least 100 ft long - so a costly demise.

Since we had never experienced a hurricane before (just a few tropical storms of low intensity) we didn't really know what we were doing while preparing. All of our loose lawn furniture etc. we put in the garage - there wasn't much we could do about the woodpile and composter but they survived completely. Our only damage was a few small broken branches. We filled assorted containers with water (wine equipment, bath tubs, pitchers) in case of a power failure - the well pump wouldn't work. And we waited.

Yesterday was Wayne's first hockey game of the season - a little thing like a hurricane doesn't stop hockey players. Sherm called Barrington arena before he left East Sable to meet Wayne at Exit 24 (car-pooling when you go 70 km to play hockey). Everything was a go. So they met, drove to the Shell in Shelburne to meet some other guys, waited, heard some hurricane stories (Jeff Harlow reported on the collapse of his building) and eventually Barrington called one of them to tell them the power was out at the arena.
So they all went home. Try again next week.

We had no power outages at all but apparently there were over 40,000 without power last night and many roads had to be cleared of trees and limbs. Our neighbour, Al, was working doing that all night.

Down at Crescent Beach this morning, there were seaweed and lobster traps over the rocks at our end of the beach, huge rolling waves, and no beach at all to walk on. Hopefully some sand is left when the waves subside.

But for a hurricane, it was pretty minor stuff. Thank you, God.