What Sandy Left Behind

A hurricane in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley is always a big event. When that hurricane lasts days, stretches for 500 miles, and hits a cold front, it makes history.

Hurricane (and later tropical storm) Sandy made her presence known Saturday October 27th as the first bands of clouds began to descend on the Shenandoah Valley. She ruined my chance to take a picture from an overlook near Charlottesville, but other than that, she was quiet but threatening.

Sunday was gray as the clouds dropped into the valley. Monday is when she first began to blow strong here, and as night fell, we lost power. She blew strong that night, and I felt that the siding was certainly ripping from the house along with more shingles from our poor tornado-and-derecho damaged roof.

We enjoyed beef & veggie stew from the storm cellar and read by lantern. Later we huddled together in the cold and managed to get a decent night’s sleep (thanks to a white noise iPhone app), and the power came back Tuesday morning.

Today, after the clouds lifted, we could see what Sandy left behind — a thick coating of snow on the mountains of West Virginia. Some reports were upwards of two feet. I obviously can’t tell that from these pictures, but it is beautiful, especially in the first pictures during sunrise. We only lost one small tree, though our driveway/lane was damaged by the running water.

We were very lucky in this part of the Shenandoah Valley. New Jersey, New York, even our beloved Outer Banks were hard hit by the wind and rain. We wish them a speedy recovery from the devastation.

Click any of the below pictures to enlarge.

*** This site is comprised solely of the opinions of its author, Stacey Morgan Smith. She works to promote gardening and tourism in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, from Roanoke to the Potomac River.***