Return to main weather page
Sunday, September 21, 2003
Isabel brought more wind than rain
By: JOHN ANASTASI, GREG COFFEY AND FREDA SAVANA
Staff Writers
As Hurricane Isabel closed in, Horsham's Midge Durkin had a premonition.
"I knew it was going to happen," she said.
Turns out she was right.
At about 11 p.m. Thursday, a large branch from one of Durkin's tulip poplar trees crashed through the roof of her Chestnut Lane home and ripped through her son's bedroom.
A portion of the branch, which measured 14 inches in diameter and 34 feet long, ended up in the dining room below.
"It went through both floors like a javelin," said Horsham police Lt. Jon Clark.
Luckily, Durkin listened to her gut Thursday night and asked both her sons - Jake, 9, and Jim, 8 - to sleep in the family room during the storm.
"The tree hit two feet from where my son's head usually is," she said. "We were in the family room and we heard a 'boom' and got up to check it out. It was a perfectly healthy tree. It had been there a long time."
As she spoke, she watched as a crew from Colonial Tree Service in Horsham cut down three tall trees that were sitting uncomfortably close to the house. A second firm - Goodwin & Son Custom Home and Additions of Hatboro - removed the branch.
"The (trees) are damaged and I think the township will want them down," she said. "And I want them down."
Hurricane Isabel's wind gusts measured between 40 mph and 55 mph and the damage they caused will keep tree service companies and utility crews busy for quite some time.
Thousands of residents in Bucks and Montgomery counties remained without power Saturday even as repair crews worked around the clock.
| The one-to-two inches of rain it brought resulted in little flooding. Furlong weather watcher Richard Hanauer measured the peak wind gust at 39 mph but the total rainfall at just .90 inches. |
By 7 p.m. Saturday, 1,500 Bucks County customers and 5,300 of their Montgomery County neighbors were still without electricity.
Fifty-two line crews were assigned to work this morning in Jenkintown and Elkins Park, where 50,000 customers lost power at the storm's peak.
The utility handed out 212,000 lbs. of dry ice at a dozen locations Friday, including the Willow Grove Park Mall. On Saturday, they distributed dry ice from just four locations.
By 8:15 p.m. Saturday, 489 PPL Electric Utilities customers were still without power in parts of Upper Bucks and Montgomery County. Some 4,362 customers had already had their electricity restored.
The company expects to restore power to most customers by 6 or 7 tonight, though some crews will still be working in the early part of the week, said Kathy Frazier, a PPL spokeswoman.
She said the hurricane was the "worst storm in our history in terms of the number of customers with outages and the damage to our wires, poles and transformers."
Isabel affected about 462,000 people in the company's service area of 1.3 million consumers in 29 counties. By Saturday night, 2,283 customers in the Lehigh service region were without power.
PPL has a network of 120 stores that will give three gallons of drinking water and three bags of ice per day for free to PPL customers who don't have power. To find the closest participating store, call PPL at (800) 342-5775.
Clemens Markets on Route 309 in Quakertown "frequently" handed out bags of ice and bottles of water Friday and Saturday, according to a manager. Redner's Market on Route 309 in Richland is also participating.
Restoring power "is a major expense," said PPL spokesman George Lewis, but the company budgets for such repairs. He said it could take months before they know how much Hurricane Isabel cost PPL in repairs.
On Hunters Run Road in Perkasie, trees and branches covered the lawns of the McBride and Foster families. Half of a tree had crashed into the McBride's garage at 5 a.m. Friday but it looked as though the only damage was to the gutter.
"It was pretty loud and we knew it" was going to fall, Melissa McBride said.
Meanwhile, Donald Foster stood on his roof, cutting branches off a tree that the day before had not been leaning anywhere near his house. His wife, Barbara, stood in the street, holding a rope to steady the tree.
"We decided to take it down before the next storm blew it down," she said.
Hilltown's Diane and John Strauss, who live along Route 152, were surprised to wake up Friday morning and realize there was no traffic driving past their home on the usually busy roadway. When they went outside, they realized the problem was that a giant silver maple tree was lying across the road.
"That baby was just waiting to go," John Strauss said.
Despite the power outages, school closings, fallen trees and downed wires, local officials seemed relieved the storm was not more serious.
The one-to-two inches of rain it brought resulted in little flooding. Furlong weather watcher Richard Hanauer measured the peak wind gust at 39 mph but the total rainfall at just .90 inches.
AccuWeather meteorologist Scott Homan said the storm's center went into extreme western Pennsylvania taking the heavier rain there.
"We dodged a big bullet," said Clark, in Horsham. "It seemed like nothing more than a bad storm."
John Anastasi can be contacted via e-mail at janastasi@phillyburbs.com .
Article's URL: http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/113-09212003-163577.html