Hanna Was Here - Seen on CNN

Sorry about the lameness of the title... it just stuck in my head. It's appropriate though because Hurricane Hanna spent most of Saturday drenching my area. They say that many places weren't hit as badly as expected but that the storm was especially strong over a swath of Prince William and Fairfax counties in Virginia. We were a part of that swath.

It wasn't bad. The wind was not so strong that it caused any real worry and my girls and I kind of liked listening to the rain. It was so strong at points that it sounded like the whole of the storm was directly over our house. It came down non-stop most of the day and we gave thanks for the new gutters that were installed earlier this year. The edges of our flower beds turned into moats and the lawn became a swamp but we didn't worrk at all.

We took full advantage of the rainy day and spent most of it inside watching shows on Tivo, playing cards and, of course - knitting. DQ was thrilled to finally watch Northanger Abbey and Stinky was happy to play games which is her favorite kind of family time. Compared to our usual hectic Saturdays, this was a dream.

The rain finally let up in the late afternoon and we ventured out on an errand but were turned back at one road near our house by police due to a dam that was threatening to break and flood the street. It was the dam that holds back the lake in a our neighborhood park so we went to take a look. Naturally I brought my camera.

We found the playground that my girls used to play on was totally under water. Judging by the basketball hoop which is about 9.5 feet high, the water had to be at least 7 feet deep. Check out the top of the swing set barely visible above the water.

Another picture I took at the park was looking out on the baseball fields and over the lake. You can see the backstop peeking out from the water. The lake usually stops just beyond the shrubs you see adjacent to the ball field and on the far shore, the green grassy area usually rises about 20 feet above the water's edge. In the distance you can just see the heavy equipment hard at work trying to shore up the dam. As far as I know, it held so I guess their hard work paid off.



Returning home from the park I fired up my laptop and submitted the pictures as an iReport to CNN. I just thought that they told the story well and might be worth sharing. Here's where the story got weird. Within 5 minutes our phone rang. It was CNN! They were getting lots of reports about flooding near me and wanted to verify information to use the pictures on CNN. They asked about the situation in our area and made sure that the photos were mine. If you look at the iReport it's labeled "On CNN". Sadly we didn't see the report on TV but it's such a kick to know that they used my little contribution.

I suppose that used up a few seconds out of my fifteen minutes.