Ida Does Serious Damage in New Jersey

It was weird that my son and I were in New Orleans while a hurricane was feared would do damage in New Jersey, and then we were back in New Jersey when another hurricane, Hurricane Ida, did serious damage in New Orleans, and really much of Louisiana. 

Last night, however, all of that caught up with us a bit. 

New Jersey was hit by the remnants of what once was Hurricane Ida last night. And while the damage was not as extreme as it had been in Louisiana, when it hit landfall as a Category 4, it nevertheless did some real damage. Today, NJN is reporting all sorts of problems across the entire state. Road closures due to flooding measured in feet in some places, water over the concrete dividers in the middle of a highway. A stretch of East Orange had something like close to two dozen cars that were going nowhere, apparently wrecked from being submerged in all of that water.

My girlfriend talked me out of trying to take my son back up north last evening, and I am glad that she did. The extent of the damage of the storm rather took my by surprise. Glad that we simply stayed in place and spent the night here, because our town of Hillsborough was one of the places hardest hit. The chances of me hitting some kind of serious flooding, either on the way out or on the way back in, would have been quite good. I will try and leave later, but at least now, in the bright sunshine of a new daylight, we have a fighting chance of actually seeing something before being submerged in it. 

At some point later today, I will try to take my son back up north, back home. These are my couple of days off before a brutal work weekend, which comes for me once each three weekends. This is one of those weekends. I will visit him most likely on Monday, Labor Day, which will be his last full day off before school begins for him on Tuesday. I have enjoyed spending as much time with him as I did this summer, and hope for the best for him this academic year, which just began, or is about to. 

Meanwhile, for anyone out there who is dealing with the remnants of Ida, which seemed to wreak havoc everywhere that she went, take care of yourselves!