Hurricane Matthew

[RetiredGypsy]

Glad you made it, how long did it take, how was the drive ?

It will be interesting for you, when you return to see what survives, especially without boarded up windows.

We left around 7:30 last night, got here in good time. There was no stop and go traffic at any time, only ever had to go under the speed limit at a couple construction sites.

Home owner evacuated and left her pet locked in her room. Poor thing is going to be terrified to death.

 

[eytonxav]

Hope everyone stays safe. I can remember back in the 80s when a cat5 storm was projected to track through Long Island and hit Stamford, CT. I went into work in downtown stamford in early morning along with only a few other employees, but left and headed home to Ridgefield before things got bad. It was a very harrowing ride home with trees coming down along the way due to the wind and heavy rain. The weather said that downtown Stamford would be leveled had the Cat 5 hit as expected, but it diminished in strength before going thru Long Island, nevertheless, was a very nasty hurricane.

 

[Big_Hitter]

^^ hurricane bob?

 

[unclemick]

anyone hosting a hurricane party?

I last hosted a hurricane party(for Katrina) in Memphis - believe it or not the hotel lobby flooded with several inches from the outer bands of rain.

May good luck, common sense and the art of exit bless those affected/effected by this one.

heh heh heh 1975 - 2005 We always moved to 'safe' areas for hurricanes in New Orleans.

 

[eytonxav]

^^ hurricane bob?

No Gloria

 

[Fermion]

The hurricane is sort of affecting us. I went to extend the stay at the state park we are in this week (in south Georgia) and they said it was all booked up with evacuees.

So now we are going to have to boondock somewhere and probably not legally. The upside there is I doubt we would get a ticket since everything is in state of emergency. I think we will just find a county or city park to spend Friday and Saturday night in our RV. Everything including hotels is booked solid.

 

[Sunset]

...Home owner evacuated and left her pet locked in her room. Poor thing is going to be terrified to death.

Possibly it will be dead, starved or dehydrated to death. What a dumb homeowner.

 

[W2R]

Wow, what an amazing cone! You've probably seen this graphic, but if not look at the five day cone loop down towards the southwest!

 

[Sarah in SC]

That curved track is crazy! And with Nicole out there, too, this is a busy October.
Quiet still this am in Charleston, just breezy and cool. I'll be volunteering again today, but back home in time to hunker down with the pets.

If any of you are weather/tech kinkiest like me, the new storm surge prototype maps on NHC.gov are fascinating. Some of the areas that are forecast to have big changes in water levels are quite a long way from the ocean. One I noted was the area around Yemassee, SC, which is on Hwy 17 above Beaufort, just before I-95. That area is very low, and when I checked out the map yesterday, it showed levels rising more than 6 feet.

Where we are is fairly high elevation, though we are within a couple of miles of the ocean and very close to the ICW. Won't be flooding here but I imagine I could navigate the whole creek behind our house tomorrow if I were so inclined!

 

[Big_Hitter]

Wow, what an amazing cone! You've probably seen this graphic, but if not look at the five day cone loop down towards the southwest!

i've seen that object drawn on my car window a few times, never could figure it out

 

[RetiredGypsy]

Wow, what an amazing cone! You've probably seen this graphic, but if not look at the five day cone loop down towards the southwest!

Go home Matthew, you're drunk!

A block off the river, and no downed trees, no power outages that were anything besides momentary. No busted windows, no flooding, no exciting debris, no dead animals. Staying just offshore and dying down to a Cat3 seemed to keep this from becoming apocalyptic.

Hopefully it stays that way. As saturated as everything is, this thing comes back even as a storm or depression, things will probably get a lot worse.

 

[Teacher Terry]

It is supposed to circle back in a few days. So sad.

 

[pb4uski]

How are y'all doing out there?

 

[Fermion]

We found a Army Corp campground in the Florida panhandle and it is sunny, birds are chirping and about 4mph wind. Category -0.5

 

[JoeWras]

It is at its worse in Raleigh right now. A bit breezy, but the big problem is rain. We're at 3/4" per hour, with a total already nearing 3" for the storm. Flooding will be a problem in NC.

I wouldn't worry about the loop back, if it does. The ocean will be too churned up, which cools it off, to allow the storm to gain any significant steam.

P.S. if you want to see what it looks like, turn on ABC and watch the madness called football (NC State vs Notre Dame) in a tropical storm.

 

[Lucantes]

Our friends checked on our house in Cocoa Beach FL after they came back from Orlando yesterday (they did end up finally evacuating from Merritt Island in the end which is a good thing), appears to be nothing "major"....dock is gone and fence on one side is gone (shared with neighbor on that side) but we were planning on having both replaced prior to our ER in April 2017 so I guess maybe we saved some demo charges?!
Doesn't look like any other major damage to important stuff (seawall, windows, walls, doors and roof etc.). Will know more in a couple of days when the property management company can get there to inspect, along with the tenant who evac'd.
Friend's house and such is fine but they still don't have power as of right now.
All things considered we really dodged a bullet I would say.

 

[JoeWras]

Shortly after my post, we lost power. NC is a mess. Very bad flooding and many still without power (thank you to the crew who got us back running).

Way too much rain. Parts of NC are going to take a year to recover from this.

 

[ShokWaveRider]

We are in St. Augustine, I am sure you saw all the pics..... We are on Anastasia Island about 1 mile from the beach. They let us back on the Island at 5pm Saturday. What a mess...... debris everywhere, all sorts of unidentifiable projectiles in the pool.

Sunday we surveyed the Damage and we have a couple of loose roof tiles, no leaks, no water breach, however they have been talking that if the storm surge was another 2ft we would have been under water. There are a few trees down in the areas and clean up starts today.

Sooooooo the moral of this story is NEVER but a house made of wood in Hurricane country, you should see some of them here, ours is concrete and had no visible wind damage (other than the tiles mentioned). we will call in a roofer to do a proper check and get an estimate to fix the 2 tiles, but it probably and hopefully will not even be as much as the deductible to repair.

I am also assuming that when we sell the house we can say "Survived Hurricane Matthew" LOL.

 

[athena53]

Sooooooo the moral of this story is NEVER buy a house made of wood in Hurricane country, you should see some of them here, ours is concrete and had no visible wind damage (other than the tiles mentioned).

I knew an actuary who lived in FL near the coast and he said he had a bad time convincing the contractor for his new home to do all the "infrastructure" things that would make a house secure in a hurricane; the contractor was more fixated on kitchen appliances and countertops. He joked that if he'd had his way they'd have built a cement house with only small portholes for windows.

Dad has reported that their house in Myrtle Beach is in good shape except that the power is out and when he returns from his stay with my brother (5 hours inland) it's going to be a messy job cleaning out the rotted food from the refrigerator and freezer.

 

[Sarah in SC]

So we were 6 days without power, ran the generator some to keep the fridge cold and a few lights, but don't have the well pump rigged for aux power. I finally broke down and showered at the boss' house on Tuesday!
We had a fire burning in the backyard for about 4 days, mostly small limbs and branches. Lost 4 trees and one elm is leaning so we are trying to salvage that one. A 80-90 foot oak next to the house is also leaning, but we cut the house-side branches on it and are waiting a bit to see if (most likely) we will have to tackle taking it down.
The water in the creek was probably around 5-6 feet compared to a couple of inches. Backyard was knee deep from the runoff higher up.
Lots of quality chain saw time for DH, that's for sure.
Back to normal now, and glad to have escaped major damage. Getting the eyewall winds on both side of this storm was a reminder of Hugo back in '89, and most of our tree damage came on the backside, same as then.

 

[Free To Canoe]

Glad to hear that you are safe and no damage to the house. I was surprised when friends from Moncks Corner said that they didn't even lose power. That didn't seem possible.

 

[JoeWras]

Glad to hear that you are safe and no damage to the house. I was surprised when friends from Moncks Corner said that they didn't even lose power. That didn't seem possible.

Do they live next to a hospital?

The general rule around here in NC is that hospitals and nursing homes are right at the top of the list for power restoration. They also seem to pay more attention to proactive management, such as cutting away troublesome limbs more frequently or even burying power lines near such facilities.

If your neighborhood is close to a hospital, and is fed by underground supply, you may be good.

 

[harley]

Glad you made it through so relatively unscathed, Sarah. I was worried about y'all. Did you get to do much with your new rescue training?

 

[Walt34]

Sarah, so glad to hear you're okay.

Have you given any thought to a permanently installed backup generator that can run the whole house or most of it? They're a lot cheaper than they used to be. If I lived where you do and subject to the storms and power going out often I'd have one for sure. You'd want to have an electrician do a survey (if you can't do it yourself) and figure what capacity you need.

Not recommending any, just an easy list: Standby Generators - Generators - Outdoor Power Equipment - Â*The Home Depot

 

[sheehs1]

Sarah, so glad to know you made it thru. I was impressed with your governor Niki Haley with how she evacuated the coastal areas of the state including Charleston. It was hard to get info about South Carolina "after", here in south eastern Va., as much of the news was about North Carolina (Lumberton, Windsor, Winton, Goldsboro, communities around the Tar and Neuse Rivers , Nags Head, Manteo all of which were hard hit with the flooding. Even Va. Beach Virginia was taken by surprise with 14 plus inches of rain with many communities flooded for days. We even had flooding here, one hour inland.

Hurricane Matthew did not turn and that was the surprise. Although not sure why as with any hurricane once it hits land predictability is hard.