The Patriot's day Noreaster left a pretty typical mess in Island Park this morning, prompting the Portsmouth Fire Department to call for a voluntary evacuation. The trucks came through about 7:30 announcing it, and I did a quick ride around the northern end of Portsmouth to check it out.

Other than the Island Park sign up on East Main, there didn't seem to be any major structural damage. There were a lot of limbs down, and a few trees. IP lost power for about half an hour around midnight, but once the power came back it stayed on, even through the second heavy band of rain around 2am.

The foot of Gormley Ave, as is pretty typical even in heavy rains, was flooded out, with water about 6-8 inches deep across Park Ave and about fifty feet up the street.

Over on Ormerod Ave, the flooding covered Flo's parking lot.

From the foot of Portsmouth Park, you could see the water just after high tide was way up the Island Park Seawall, with waves washing over onto Park Ave.

I stopped by the High School to see if anyone had evacuated. The Red Cross volunteers said that they'd been set up since about 7:30, but nobody had come by. It was easy to see why — once you got up out of the Park, it looked pretty much like just a bad rainstorm. There were a few trees down, and one power line dangling across Sprague Street just before Education Lane, but the parking lots at Reidy's and Dunkin Donuts looked like a normal morning.

Couple of notes of concern — if this had been a real emergency, getting out of the Park from Hummocks Ave could have been tricky. There was fairly deep water where Anthony Road turns under the railroad bridge. Also, when I first got to the High School, shortly after 8am, there wasn't any signage for the shelter. They were just putting signs up when I swung by half an hour later.

More photos up on Flickr.