Dear Christine,

Thanks for all of the tips on thunderstorms! They helped the whole family be prepared for this monster. Now do you have any tips for after the storm because none of us know what were doing! What do you do with all the humongous tree limbs that broke off? Do you know how long it takes for all the dirty water from the flooding to finally evaporate? So many questions such little time, well at least before the storm hits you guys in Massachusetts.

I wish i could at least watch the news to know what is going on outside of my house. But, a bolt of lightning striked the power lines. It is said that the power will be out for about a week. WHOOPEE! When i peeked out the windows the big chunks of hale were still sitting on the sidewalks waiting to be picked up, they are practically the size of baseballs! They destroyed almost everything under them. They damaged cars, buildings, tree's, mailboxes, anything else, you name it! It's ashame on how much money will need to be spent to fix everything.

With the high winds, hail, lightning, flooding, and tornadoes from this thunderstorm it damaged marine transportation, air planes, boats, and cars. They are spending the most money on air transportation, approxamitley 580 million. Thats entirely insane! I wish they could find a way to prevent thunderstorms,like this one, from happening. Oh yeah and did i mention, on top of that whopping amount of money they are spending 8-9 million on disaster relief and 12.5 billion worth of property and agriculture damage.

I'm so lucky that i'm not one of the people to get struck by a bolt of lightning. On our weather radio they reported about 5-10 deaths accured during this particular storm. But an average per year is 152 and not just from the lightning for all the other "symptoms" in a storm. Who knew?

Our food supply is low since we havnt gotten to go out and stock up in about a week! And we arent allowed to drink any tap water, since it may not be clean. I've been living off of orange juice and milk (yuck!). The gas station down the street is long gone! So i guess this means no more gas for miles :(.

O well, it seems really scary right now, but each day it gets a little better! Thanks for the tips and i hope my warning will have you even more prepared then i am. So stock up on food and make sure you always have a flashlight with you incase your power also goes out. Thanks again! Well our laptop is dead so i cant email you back after this but if you want to look up more facts click ">here.

Love,

Emily♥