We seem to have come through "Sandy" with very little damage here at Joe's Pond.  I haven't heard of anything, and we didn't even lose our power on this side of the pond.  The wind and rain was heavy  until around midnight, but then let up.  This morning I had .71 in. of rain in my gauge, and the highest my wind gauge registered was 24.1 m.p.h.  

I took this picture a little while ago - things are soggy and there are no leaves left on any of the trees - even the tamaracks have been pretty well stripped of their needles, as you can see by the row of them along the road.  Our driveway had been littered with maple leaves, but this morning it is swept clean - not a leaf in sight on the pavement.  There are still plenty of leaves on the ground, but neatly packed into ravines and caught in underbrush in the woods.

This morning we did our walk up Jamie's driveway - well, I walked, Fred ran and did it four times - and the temperature was mild - 50 something.  It's 54 right now, cloudy and some rain showers and gusty winds.  I suppose with strong wind gusts some of the trees that are in soggy soil could topple, but so far so good.  We're relieved, of course, especially when watching the devastation in other parts of New England and states south of us.  Many people here were thinking in terms of "Irene," but it wasn't as bad as feared.  Wisely, lots of schools are closed today to allow utility crews to get power back and clear debris from the roads.

We know some of our Joe's Ponders were in areas that have been hit very hard by this storm, and as soon as we hear from them, I'll post messages here.  We have members who live on Long Island, in Connecticut, NYC, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania - just about every state along the coast, and I'm anxious to hear if they are ok.  With power outages at the very least, they will be busy handling what is necessary to be safe and get through the next several days.