OSWEGO, NY – The Oswego County area was spared the brunt of Hurricane Irene’s fury.
“We were lucky. We have had to deal with some branches and a few limbs,” according to Bill Gregway, local observer for the National Weather Service. “Other places, just a little south and east of here have a lot more damage, flooding and power outages.”
The winds were pretty bad, especially down at the harbor and along the lake shore, he added.
“The winds were strong throughout the day. They were blowing pretty good from the north-northeast; that’s always a bad thing when they are this high,” he said. “We had some big wind. But, we didn’t get a whole lot of rain.”
Rain started around 11 a.m. and continued, with some heavy downpours, until just about 4 p.m. Gregway recorded a total of 0.44-inch
“We got off real easy rain wise. A lot of places around us received an inch or more,” he said. “The wind was our bugaboo.”
The barometric pressure dropped to 29.52 early Sunday morning. It bottomed out at 29.42 around 1:30 p.m. and struggled up from there.
“We had wind speeds of over 40 mph, way over at times, at the weather station earlier (Sunday),” Gregway said. “They dropped down a bit, but are still around 25 – 30 mph this afternoon.”
With a couple more days to go, the storm’s precipitation brought August’s total to 6.13 inches.
“That’s good for sixth place on the all time wettest August list going back to 1844,” Gregway said.
In fifth place is 6.30 inches.
“I doubt will reach that,” Gregway said. “Right through the Labor Day Weekend is looking nice.”
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