(09-30-2024, 10:09 AM)Mikey Wrote:

(09-28-2024, 05:50 PM)NYC4jags Wrote: Hope more folks are getting power back

Anyone heard from Mikey?

I think he is near Tallahassee and was still rebuilding from storm damage when this came along.

Sorry, I don't generally log in from home. We never lost power at the temporary residence, storm ran east of us and saved us from a lot of the weather. House lost a tarp and the roof may have settled slightly, thankfully rebuild had not started, though we are close. Figured if the storm stayed west, getting the eastern bands would have helped the contractor with some of the roof removal we'll be doing.

Barely had any debris even, it was eerily uneventful locally.

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(09-28-2024, 08:39 PM)americus 2.0 Wrote: Here in central NC we got about 12 hours of intermittent wind and heavy rain. Light flickered a bunch but the electricity held. We bought a generator in December 2022 when the whole county lost power thanks to the nut jobs shooting at our power grid but didn't need it. 

We have a favorite Airbnb we stay in over in the mountains. I messaged the hostess yesterday to check in on her and her husband. She said their county and one next to it are completely without power, water, landline and internet. Power and phone poles snapped in half. Trees down everywhere. She said it's really, really bad. Water over roads from rivers and creeks flowing down the mountain. There are a lot of creeks and rivers and the area had already been getting a lot of rain so the 23" that fell due to the storm added fuel to that fire. She's hoping linemen can get up there to start making repairs but many roads are washed out so nobody knows how long it will take. 

This video will give you a very small idea of the scope of devastation southwestern NC and eastern TN has sustained. FL was just the first in a long line of states affected by Helene. 

My husband works as a wastewater operator at a plant in Fayetteville which is east of where we live. He said the water flow coming through the plant is the most he's ever seen and he's been doing this for nearly 30 years. Even Hurricane Florence (2018) didn't cause this much flow and it flooded many areas from the coast to Fayetteville. No hurricane or TS has ever caused this much flow that anyone can remember. A piece of equipment went offline and couldn't be restarted last night. 

Stuff like this makes you really realize you only have today so make the best of it because you might have nothing tomorrow. Oh, and if you don't prep, you're not very smart. Always have non-perishable food, water, batteries, fuel for your grill, etc., so you can deal with whatever else comes up without stressing about food and water.

Thing with FL was this storm was cruising along. I think it slowed down once it got to GA and then all of the rain overwhelmed everything in the mountains. I watched a few of those videos and it's jaw-dropping how devastating water (and everything it carries) can be.

Glad to hear you're okay! Yeah the storm actually started affecting SE NC days before it hit the Florida coast. Between the size of the storm and a cold front causing it's own problems the perfect storm of circumstances were there to make it the worst weather event to hit NC in recorded history. And, ironically, it was 66 years to the day that another Hurricane Helene cat 4 was headed straight for the NC coast but turned at the last minute. 

If you're interested this article is a pretty interesting read about how it all came together to create the chaos we see in the media. 

https://climate.ncsu.edu/blog/2024/09/ra...estern-nc/

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