UPDATES:

OK, just got off the phone with my wife. More reports.

- Power is still out. Generator and fuels doing fine.

- Phone and cell service nominal. (as an aside - we have both corded "old fashioned" phones and cordless phones in the house. I keep 2 extra "old style" phones in our communications box.

- Damage is localized and linear - looks like it came straight through my area, didn't seem to do nearly as much damage just 2 miles north or south.

- One of my neighbor's houses took a large tree square on. The house is severely damaged/destroyed. Don't have a firm report yet.

- Another neighbor's STONE barn blew down. Yes, a stone barn. They are taking it in stride, my kids are over in their pool right now!

- Tree clearing on the south end of my road is moving well, but still no sense of if the road will re-open today. (hope to get a LOT of free wood chips!)

- Lots and lots of damage of many kinds from falling/flying debris to other homes. Apparently, we were very, very lucky.

- A few more trees down on my property, far away from the house. One of my trees into my neighbor's power lines, just leaning, didn't take them down.

- Still plenty of damage to the power grid, no clear eta on restoration.


ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS

- The speed that this hit with was incredible. If I was out in my back yard at the furthest corner, I don't know if I could have made it back to the house in the time it took for this to go from a "a bit rainy" to "get into the basement NOW". Given the size of the branches that are down I don't like this thought at all.

- The loss of data services while voice continued was VERY frustrating.

- My kids were great. No panic, a little whimpering from my five-year-old, but they did EXACTLY what they were told INSTANTLY.

- In the past NOAA has issued SO MANY alerts and "Warnings" that, although I had heard the familiar BZRRAPPP-BZRAPP-BZRAPP of the NOAA warnings on the radio not long before this event, I tuned it out. They are the agency that constantly cries wolf with useless stuff like: "Warning: It's going to be hot in July" - over and over and I think that they do a disservice abusing their alerting system the way they do. I don't even HAVE a weather alert radio anymore because I got sick of all the BS watch and warning alerts for ordinary weather.