Ahhh… the hindsight of a historian  ;DHaving ridden out Hurricane Hugo at Parris Island back in 1990, I too kind of "poo-poo'ed" all the hoopla over a Cat 1 storm, but having experienced Hurricane Camille in Virginia in 1969 and witnessing the staggering amounts of rainfall that came with it (up to 27 inches overnight in Nelson County), I worried about rainfall totals in New England as all that tropical air collided with those mountains as the first substantial landfall.They are saying now that Irene will go on the list as one of top ten most expensive storms in US history.  From a flooding, property damage, and power outage perspective, at least.  Last count I heard was 45 killed.  Oh, and the earthquake -- shook us pretty good in Manassas, and one of the aftershocks woke us up dark and early the next morning.  Not quite like the quakes when I lived in San Diego, but hell, this is Virginia and they're pretty rare here.

Unprecedented?  No, but rare — I grew up in Central Virginia, went to college in NC, joined the Marine Corps and ran away for about 20 years, and I've been back for a decade now, so in the 30 or so years that I have consistently lived in Virginia I can recall two other temblors – but nothing like the last one.I do remember as a kid living in irrational fear of an earthquake on the very faultline where this last one was -- that's because back when they build the North Anna Nuclear facilities and built Lake Anna I had visions of an earthquake followed by a mushroom cloud off to the east.  Like I said, the irrational fear of a little kid - now that I'm much older, wiser, and more mature, I realize that a mushroom cloud coming from Lake Anna is absurd... it would be a large cloud of radio-active steam!