I know technically it was a Tropical Storm by the time it hit Ohio, and no longer a Hurricane, but I'm still considering it a Hurricane. I never been apart of anything like that on Monday night into Tuesday morning. The winds were sustained at ~50 miles an hour and gusting up to 70+ mph. Trees have been uprooted all over town and many houses have tree damage from trees falling on them. I have now been out of power for over 36 hours, and judging my the outage map on First Energy's website the # of reported outages in my area keep going up, so the ulitity company workforce is still concentrating on the city of Cleveland and not the suburbs yet. Also, I heard a lot of the utility workforce headed on East to help the east coast repair and rebuild after the Storm came through, so we are short handed as it is here.
I saw the transformer on the pole in front of my house blow up. I was laying in bed Monday night trying to get some sleep even though the winds outside were insane and making so much noise with the trees, brush etc. While laying in bed I heard 2 very loud BUZZ sounds, and then outside my window, the entire sky turned a lightning blue, then all the power went out. That happened at 11:45. On the news prior that night I remember they said there was no lightning from this storm, but I swear to god I saw multiple blue flashes light up the sky during the night, so I'm guesing those were sourced from other pole transformers blowing up around the city. I even saw a huge orange explosion, sourced from the ground, and I'm guessing that was another explosion of some sort. After the huge orange glow, I saw a flickered orange from over the trees, so I am assuming it started some sort of fire.
It was my first hurricane. And like I said, I live in OHIO, this stuff doesn't happen here so no one was prepared. I'm prepping for another night without power tonight
E: By the way, Monday night I was watching the news before the power went, and the waves generated on Lake Erie crashing up on shore were the worst I've ever seen in my life from Lake Erie. It was certainly quite something to be a part of and something I won't ever forget. When Irene hit the east coast, it's effects on Cleveland here were minimal. But Sandy, was insane here.
I can say myself that my area was hit the hardest in Ontario, being in Sarnia. Initial private insurance claims have exceeded $10mil. Same situation, many went without power for over 24hours. Trees uproots, roofs torn off, roof torn of the local Holiday Inn causing extensive water damage to 50 of its rooms, residents along beach areas reporting that paint had been stripped off their cars by flying sand. But I can say that we got lucky, I only spent about an hour without power, and only had our back fence blown away.
I will say that the worst of it hit us tuesday morning on my way to school. Wind gusts were strong enough in the college parking lot that I was thrown to my ass because of unbalance from my backpack.