In the aftermath of Hurricane Irene, Martin and Judy King examined the damage left by the large uprooted tree in their front yard that had fallen squarely onto the roof of their Arlington home. They also had water coming in through the front of their house. “I don’t recall anything this severe” in the 41 years they have lived there, said Martin, attributing the tree falling to soil saturated from a summer of storms. But Judy quickly disagreed. “It didn’t seem to me so severe until the tree fell down.”
Now the Kings said they are thinking about having people over to their damaged home to help them eat their stockpiles of food.
Throughout the region, people were making the best of a storm that some felt failed to live up to the hype, but that still caused headaches or worse for thousands of people.
Roads were strewn with debris, thousands had no power, and some suffered damage to their homes.
But for many, the storm didn’t wreak the expected destruction.
“I thought perhaps we might have more water damage and lose more trees,” Arlington resident Maureen Nesselrode said, adding that Irene was not even the heaviest rainstorm she has seen in the area.
Though Meghan Albal’s Columbia home had not regained power by Sunday afternoon, she said Hurricane Irene didn’t compare to the snowstorms of the last two years.
Arlington resident Nahed Yousofy said she found it strange that so many businesses closed given that the storm turned out to be comparable to those she had experienced in the past.
Other residents were somewhat disappointed with the storm not living up to expectations.
D.C. resident Nate Young called Irene “underwhelming” and “a dud.”
“There could have been more dramatic winds,” he said. “Even losing electricity would have been a little fun for a few hours.”
He added that he wished the storm had come in the middle of the workweek, rather than on a weekend, so he could have taken a day off.
“I personally was hoping a large tree would fall on my 11-year-old car so I could get a new one,” Springfield resident Mwape Beeman said.
The media overplayed the storm, said Beeman, even inciting panic in some areas, but the storm turned out to be “nothing Earth-shattering.”
Arlington resident Stephanie Delenick agreed.
“We were ready for it to be crazy, but nothing happened,” she said. “The hype was a lot more than I’ve seen in the past, but the storm wasn’t something extraordinary.”
The media might have overreacted because of memories from Hurricane Katrina in 2005, said Sheri Fry, who was visiting from Denver.
“We went overboard a little bit, but better safe than sorry,” she said.
And while some people wish they had seen a bigger storm, Nesselrode is not one of them.
“I can do without the excitement,” she said.
