What a week!

Last week was adventurous to say the least.
QUAKE - On Monday an 5.8 magnitude earthquake centered in rural Mineral,Virginia brought serious tremors to Maryland and shook our house at 1:51pm EDT . It took a minute to figure it out as I watched our south-facing inside wall shake and take pictures down. It made sense that the south-facing wall rumbled because the epicenter was south, in Virginia. I (Rob) was working at home, so after 20 seconds I got all the dogs downstairs and into the bathroom. Scary.
HURRICANE IRENE - Because I'm a meteorologist and thrive on hurricane science this was a big week for me- but a tough week and weekend from Puerto Rico to the Bahamas, and in the U.S. from North Carolina to Vermont. Irene was a HUGE rainmaker, dropping about 16 inches of rain in NC, VA, and lesser (but huge) amounts all the way up to Vermont, where the effect of Irene moving against the Green mountains brought the worst flooding seen there in 75 years. 250 Vermont roads are closed from flooding according to Governor Shumlin this morning. New Hampshire dealt with the same due to the White Mountains' effect, which is called orographic uplift, and forced air to rise against the mountains and caused more storms, bringing more rain. **I worked over the weekend covering all of it on www.nasa.gov/hurricane (also on Facebook and Twitter).
  Here at home, we happily kept our roof and sustained no damage. Other houses didn't fare as well and I know that there are 3.1 million people without power up and down the U.S. east coast.
SUMMER COLD? - I've been sick for the last week with a sore throat, head and chest congestion, headache, etc. and this weekend coughing so much, I've been pulling my back and chest muscles. Hoping to feel better later this week. Fortunately, Tom didn't catch this!