Monday, 11:18... Report that the winds in Warwick, ten miles south, are gusting at 40 mph. Still pretty clear here...not a hard rain, but a persistent one, clouds still surging from the east out of a sky gone completely gray. Video of the scene at one of the auditoriums, kids and families huddled on on cots, "They came by this morning and told us to, 'Get out, get out!'" Now announcing that at 1pm there will be a complete travel ban on all state roads, to be enforced by the State Police. State of emergency. This convinces me. I start making phone calls and locate a room at the Howard Johnson's up in Middletown that will accept one damp refugee and a cat. Gotta be at least a hundred feet above sea level up there.

The feeder bands, those areas of intense winds and gusty rains, are tracked minute by minute by the weatherfolks on their doppler radar. Now they're saying it may scootch a little bit to the east and head up Buzzard's Bay, but that we can still expect tropical force winds anytime now, and hurricane force by one o'clock. The Governor has announced a press conference in the Situation Room up at the statehouse. He made it in to T.F. Green airport before they shut it down; returning from the Governor's conference out on the West Coast. If I could drive and watch TV at the same time, I'd have left already. How else can I cover the event without access to the media of communication central to my culture?

The real leap of Faith. Do you turn off the power, or take the chance that things won't be quite as bad as they're predicting? Perhaps its better not to take the chance. Better err on the side of caution and throw the switch. Officially powered it down at 11:18. Unscrewed all four of the main fuses and flipped the box for the hot water heater, and it looks like just in the nick of time, too. The trees are doing a really funky tree dance-Thing.

There's an eerie sense of calm just right now. As I walked out to the car, a monarch butterfly accompanied me from the rosebushes. And there is a cat who is happy to see me finally make it out to the car. I'll sit here for a minute and see how things progress. Turn the key and go. It's time.

Park Avenue. The roads are strangely desolate. A few cars driving slowly. No one's too worried just yet, but what everyone wants to avoid is being trapped Somewhere, anywhere, so there's people driving the way I am, looking out all the windows, trying to see what's happening. After 1pm, when they shut all the roads, no one will be moving. I'm down near the end of the Park Ave seawall now and can barely see across to Portsmouth Park, so much fog and confusion. All of the houses down here, giant sheets of plywood over the windows, sliding glass doors.

Yeah, I think I timed it just about right, driving down East Main Road seeing lots of leaves knocked down. Not much vehicular traffic, and the car is definitely feeling pushed around by the wind. All the windows of the Dairy Mart are taped up, and the trees are bending dangerously over the power lines. A Portsmouth Water and Fire District truck just passed me, looks like they're driving around keeping an eye on things.

It's a serious storm at this point, driving sheets of rain, you can hear it on the roof, not quite opaquing the windshield, but coming pretty darned close. No sign of life in the plaza with the Mac Shop. Already here on East Main Road, there's small limbs knocked down, so the trees arel already feeling the effects, with leaves blowing across the roadway in rainy gusts.

Down at the corner of Turnpike and East Main, picking up a New York news radio station, and now they're announcing that Gorbachev is not out, simply "ill" That sounds to me like there's some back and forthing about who's in control of Tass right now, if not the Soviet Union itself.

As cars are going by in the other direction, they're throwing up roostertails that are whipped across the road at 45 degree angles, and the winds are definitely tropical force level now.

Down at Portsmouth Town Hall the flagpole is deviating from the vertical by a couple of feet, with the flag straight out to the west, the wind perpendicular to the road.

Okay, now we're down just past Oliphant in Middletown and we've got solid sheets of white water coming right across the farms to the left here and into the windshield. To the left, its solid gray sky, and we're definitely into gale force action. The streetlight in front of the Vinland winery is already out, and just went past a crew up on a cherry picker doing some work, so we've obviously got a few power lines down already.

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