Bombogenesis!

No I am not kidding!

That is what happened to us the other night… well, us and a million or so other Mainers (Maine-iacs, Maine-iacals, Maine-sters, okay-I’ll-stop). Also there were other states involved too so a lot of other State-ers were impacted by a funky weather pattern.

Not everyone gets to say they were a part of a Bombogenesis though, which is a mid-latitude cyclone that intensifies wicked rapidly and is also called… wait for it… a ‘weather bomb’! And, according to scientists and stuff, you can’t really know unless you can measure millibars or isotopes or something.

Which I cannot.

But luckily weather-dot-com can and they said that, if you drop at least 24 millitopes (or isobars) in 24 hours, that is called a Bombogenesis.

And we did!

Well… JoHn and Granny and I personally drop any, but something did. And Oh. My. Gawd.

So, late on Sunday night, we were sitting in our living room getting ready to watch Criminal Minds with Granny. It’s a wonderful family show, kind of like The Wonderful World of Disney but with more blood. And it’s pretty good too, even though Mandy Patinkin told New York Magazine that he regrets doing it because something about serial killers not being good bedtime stories for anyone.

This from the guy who acquiesced, “You seem like a descent fellow, I hate to kill you. ” in The Princess Bride.

Makes no sense, right?

But, then again, it’s probably okay with Mandy because Inigo Montoya seemed to be expressing regret, which is something that homicidal narcissistic sociopaths don’t often do on Criminal Minds. So I guess there’s some logic there.

Where was I?

Oh!

So we are gearing up for our program but, right before we switched over to Netflix, a banner came on the regular TV channel that said something about a hurricane warning for just south of us. And I was all, ‘what?’

Because who gets a surprise hurricane?

Tornadoes? Yes.

Earthquakes? Sure.

Tsunamis? Absolutely.

But a surprise hurricane?!

I didn’t even know we were expecting rain.

So I went to weather-dot-com and they had multiple warnings for right here on Southport Island!

Flash flood warning…

High wind warning…

Marine advisory…

And those were all warnings. Not just a piddly watch or two.

And also, the Coast Guard was telling people to pull their boats out of the water!

Something was about to happen.

So I checked around some more and former hurricane Phillippe was moving up the coast, but by the time he got here it shouldn’t have been that big of a deal.

See, that’s where I blew it.

I should myself.

And later that night? Well… I nearly did it again (with a different vowel).

Because at about midnight, the winds that had already been howling for a couple of hours began revving their engines.

Honestly, I kept saying to JoHn that I thought I heard a plane engine beneath the wind.

It turned into about six straight hours of blowing and battering and house shaking and quaking.

Every time we heard a boom, I braced. I had all my radar on in case a tree came through the house (like the one in Poltergeist)… Where were the dogs, where was Granny, and how fast could I get them all out?

As if it was all up to me. I mean, I was sitting right next to JoHn.

Apparently, I’m a very self-centered first responder.

At about 5 a.m. – two hours before sunrise – the power cut out. We were both sitting up in bed, facing the windows. We could see reflections of the water outside, and it was so high. We even had to raise our voices to hear ourselves. And we stayed, pretty much, in the same positions until the sun came up.

Later, we would find out – at the Boothbay House of Pizza (which has great pizza, by the way, and also wifi) – this particular Bombogenesis approached from the southeast. Pretty much the exact direction our house faces. And, though we are on a protected cove, we are pretty dang close to the open ocean.

And it sure felt like it.

At the House of Pizza, we also found out that more than 400,000 folks in Maine had lost their power – over a million across New England.

Wow!

The numbers here broke the record set during the very-well-remembered-by-anyone-who-lived-through-it ice storm of 1998.

Right now, I’m back at the Boothbay House of Pizza, and a few weathered gentlemen sitting nearby are saying things like, “…maybe a week, maybe two” when it comes to the power being turned on. Who knows!

People are pretty great at coming together in times like these. I like knowing it. I like seeing it.

Once we got the fires going in the fireplaces yesterday, making sure Granny was all set, I had to head to one of my favorite spots in the area. It isn’t a bad place to take pics either, which doesn’t hurt.

I knew it would be pretty good.

I didn’t know that it would blow past great.

After the storm? There is a lot of damage, and oodles of people needing a hand and lending a hand. These things will take time (and lots of hands). And, sure, we also have a pain in the arse power outage (again, it’ll take time).

But we also have beauty found in an ocean still raging.

Mostly, I think, because it was woken up in the middle of the night, without much warning, and by a bomb.

I’d be kind of pissed too (but I wish I looked this beautiful when I’m angry)…

I know, right?

Thanks for readin’.

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