The impact of Hurricane Irene will be felt for a very long time focused now on downed power lines, epoch flooding, cresting rivers, unsafe buildings, and clean-up especially in Vermont and New Jersey. Damage estimates will be in the billions, and nothing will be the way it was for those caught up in the hurricane. Millions of lives will be changed forever.
It all seems to have started with the 2011 Mississippi River floods in April and May. Those storms produced one of the largest tornado outbreaks in U.S. history. Tornadoes also accompanied Irene's descent on planet Earth.
On May 3, the Army Corps of Engineers blasted a two-mile (3 km) hole in the levee protecting the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway, flooding 130,000 acres (530 km2) of farmland in Mississippi County, Missouri, in an effort to save the town of Cairo, Illinois and the rest of the levee system, from record-breaking flood waters. I think that created ruptures in the North America Plate which led to the east coast earthquake last week. Now we watch the New Madrid Fault Zone. Two hundred years ago - from December 16, 1811 - February 7, 1812 they experienced a series of four major earthquakes registering 8.0 and above - the last earthquake an 8.6.
This always reminds me of prophecies having to do with end time flood stories - the metaphor that cannot be ignored.
