Well last night Noel hit us here on my island, it was an interesting night for sure. I've witnessed a lot of hurricanes, and tropical storms in my life but this one made the top 10 list. I thought I would share a little bit about my experiences last night.

First of all I couldn't sleep, there was loud thunder and lots of lightning. The winds in my area reached speeds of 177km/h so my house was shaking from time to time. The roads were covered completely in wet leaves, downed trees, and miscellaneous objects from around town (my favorite was the bench which usually sits at the board walk was about 2 blocks up a hill from where is should have been.) I'm not sleeping at all.

I was getting pretty comfortable around 5 am, and I was just about to get some sleep and the phone rang. It came up "Cape Breton Regional" on the caller ID that is the name of the local hospital so everyone in the house thought something happened to my grand parents. My dad answered the phone and I ran upstairs to see what was going on and he just said "Come on nick we're going" apparently it was the "Cape Breton regional police" who called they thought my dad's boat was in trouble. We drove to the docks and realized it wasn't my dad's boat which was caught in the storm but another one.

This was the most incredible force of nature I've ever seen. The waves were rocking the 8 ton boat up above the wharf, making it land on the wharf and then pulled it back into the ocean. The boat needless to say is totaled... The waves in side the protective harbor were about 3 metres high and out side were reported to be 20 meters high...

I have the whole boat incident on video from my phone, I just cant figure out a way to get it to my computer.

Here is a little more from my local news:
http://www.capebretonpost.com/index.cfm?sid=77172&sc=145

Wow! Glad to hear you and your family are safe Nick!
I've never been through a hurricane, of course I don't live on the coast and have never been anywhere during hurricane season. I don't think it's anything I want to go through! lol

Oh man, must have been a scary ride. Glad you are okay.

*shivers* I'm terrified of tornadoes, I had an incident with one with I was staying with Caitlin... Scary stuff...

The clean up of my island went very well. As of right now there are a couple of thousand people without power, but no one was seriously hurt. Just property damage, and some other minor complications. Everything is pretty well back to normal. Oh, as for my family being ok. My father tells me just as long as his sailboat is ok he doesn't care what happens. LOL!

I know, it will just take a little bit of adapting. I'll just follow the Hoosiers to safety. I just haven't experienced that sort of thing before. But I'll tough it out.

Lol, worst is that we were on a pontoon boat in the middle of Kentucky Lake when the sirens went off.  We had no shelter or cover.  Plus, my nine year old cousin was terrified, so I was focused on sheltering her and trying to make her feel better and so was Nick.  So, it wasn't the best tornado experience to say the least.  I still think it would be neat to watch one from a distance, but every time the sirens go off Nick freaks and yells until I get to the basement.

Sounds like quite the ride. I am happy everything is ok with you and your family. Storms can be quite powerful and amazing.