After sitting safe in their home for most of the day, Brian and Jane Burris wanted to get out to see just how bad Hurricane Earl had been.
They drove around for an hour without finding any downed trees.
Disappointed the returned home.
Jane started to go to into the house to make a phone call.
"You better come take a look at this," Brian called from the backyard.
While they were away a large maple had fallen in their back yard.
"We were watching all the poplar there," Jane said pointing to a line of tress on the side of her yard. "They tend to have a shallow root and not a long life, so now we're wondering if we should take the maple down out front. We're just lucky it landed it the way it did."
The tree fell away from the house, and even missed the fire pit, a glass bird and an ornamental tree. Some plants in the garden were squashed.
"It's made a big difference in the back of our yard, because the back of our yard was all shaded," she said. "It took all of our backyard."
The Burris' aren't the only ones in the county who will have some major cleanup to do. Branches and trees brought fell throughout the county as Hurricane Earl brought gusts of up to 110 km an hour to the area.
At the height of the storm more than 20,000 people in the county were without power. Across Nova Scotia the problem was similar as down limbs took down power and phone lines putting the lights out for about 220,000 people in the province.
"Clearly this was a very significant storm," said David Rodenheiser, spokesman for NS Power. "It has caused outages throughout a wide geographic range of the province."
About 500 workers including 77 who came from New Brunswick were busy trying to restore power over the weekend and about 100 people were working to answer calls from customers.
"We staffed up and we've been very grateful for how patient customers have been," Rodenheiser said.
Most of the power was returned by Sunday night although there were still a few homes in the county without power Monday.
"We're working hard to finish those restorations," Rodenheiser said.
Comparitively, Hurricane Earl was slight weaker in strength then Hurricane Juan as far as Pictou County was concerned, said Canadian Hurricane Centre Manager Chris Fogarty. When Juan hit it had gusts of 118 km/hr according to a weather station at Caribou. The same station measured gusts of 110 km/hr during Earl, Fogarty said.
"Earl was very much a hurricane when it hit Nova Scotia," Fogarty said.
The centre of the storm passed just 70 km northwest of New Glasgow, which means that the area got about as much wind as any part of the province. Halifax and areas of along the coast were hit harder because the storm was just coming off the water though, he said.
The traffic lights throughout many of the towns were not working much of Saturday and two along East River Road in New Glasgow were blown out of place.
Long lineups were reported at the Irving at Exit 21, one of only two in the county open Sunday afternoon. At one point the line up stretched right up the exit ramp to the highway, police said.
Police had their hands full in Pictou where they had to put up caution tape to keep people wanting a closer look from going too far out on the wharf. Portions of the marina where boats were docked was blown out of order and a couple people had to bring in tires to prevent their boats from being damaged more.
The RCMP also had to deal with four people who were swimming in Melmerby Beach during the storm.
A portion of Willow Street In New Glasgow was closed after a pole broke.
