I always have mixed feelings about the reporting in advance of storms like this--on the one hand, people need to be aware of how serious things could be, but on the other hand, they often seem to over-hype things such that most people are jaded the next time around because nothing is ever as bad as they predict. The weather blog folks at Washington Post are usually pretty even-handed about these things, so I pretty much only pay attention to them. :-p

I think you're probably right about not being able to trap Brigit again anytime soon if you do it now. As you say, she's well enough inland that she should be fine, and I'm sure things falling aren't anything new to her with some of the storms that have gone through in the recent past.

Dominion Power was apparently saying at like midday today that it will be a multi-day restoration event, so it's not just Pepco. That said, I think that's ridiculous even under circumstances where they don't have advance warning, much less in cases like this where they do! The power companies here are such whiners. They should have just buried the lines in the first place and been done with it.