Off-Topic Forum

Yet another major hurricane hitting the southeast in 2018. I hope for the best for the people of the Florida panhandle! And this one will also hit South Carolina & North Carolina (but as a tropical storm by then). Like we need more rain and wind anywhere near here.

I hope everyone in the path evacuates or stays safe. The NWS issued a Flash Flood Watch here in central NC at about 3pm Tuesday for the entire day of Thursday. At least this storm is expected to move much faster than Florence did. Forecast rainfall here is at about 6 inches from Michael alone. But we've had spotty showers every day this week so far. At least we can get out of the high temperatures of 85-92F for a day or two! That's way above average for October. Where the heck is Autumn already?!

fortunatly this is far left to me ...my kids though live in MS and more worried about the surge than anything as they live a couple miles from the beaches. Daughters boyfriend went to the point where he moved his boat up next to the house just in case they need transportation 

Where is Autumn? That is a great question! We have been dealing with November weather since late September. We got 9 inches of snow on Saturay/Sunday and now crazy cold. Yesterday was -8C (-16 with the wind chill) =( Its even worse than last year!!! Grrrrrr.

Up here in New England our weather geeks are saying it could be like another Katrina. Hope everyone is smart and evacuates those areas. It's supposed to be mid 80's today and a high of 59 for the forseeable forecast. No wonder my throat is hurting.

I am FINALLY back online! Michael was really bad here. The forecasters got the rainfall total right with 6 inches, BUT they didn't say it would fall in a single 8-hour span. This is the most disasterous tropical storm I've seen in this area since Hurricane Fran in 1996. My backyard was flooded so much that the water table in the ground forced water into the basement from below. I was literally at the basement door with a squegee on a pole forcing the incoming water out the back door onto the patio to keep the water from rising even more inside. I was able to move most important things out of the path of the water. What I didn't realize was that the plug for the DSL modem fell in the water. Then when the power got turned back on 52 hours later, it fried my modem. I couldn't just go buy a new one in a store. I had to order one directly from AT&T. Instead, I finally made the switch to a cable internet connection. It got installed Thursday afternoon. There was so much water falling that I saw something I never thouoght I would see. My pond overflowed! I don't mean that it ran down the spillway heading to the next pond (which is actually a small lake). That's pretty common for the spillway to fill up and rarely it flows outside of the channel. What I mean is that the water started flowing over the top of the dam!!! I've never seen it even close to doing that in the decade that I've lived here.

The storm brought 8 straight hours of heavy rainfall with a slight break that only lasted about 30 minutes. But that break was too late as the 80mph wind gusts started before the rain slacked off. The wind blew trees down all around this area. Some people didn't even get power back until just before midnight on Tuesday. Mine came back on Saturday evening about 7:30pm. I couldn't even leave my road Thursday to go to work. There were trees and power lines down b/t my house and the stop sign at the end of the road. Going west to NC61 was cut off also. There were power lines hanging across the road and trees down a couple houses past that. People in about a dozen houses around me were trapped here until Friday morning when the power lines were fixed heading to the west. I have a bunch of pictures, but I need to upload them before I can post them. I had no actual damage to the property here besides the water level rising. I had to cut out some carpet and toss that out but other than the modem, no real damage. Nothing worth involving the insurance company.

Oddly, the storm brought Autumn in behind it. It's been pretty chilly since that day. I mean respectively. When you drop from highs in the 80s-90s and lows in the 60s to highs in the 60's and lows in the 40's, that's a helluva temperature drop. And it's stayed that way since the storm. Luckily, I have a kerosene heater and it was full b/c I needed it last Friday night. Another lucky thing was that the freezers were stuffed enough that I didn't lose much food. I had to toss out about $50-60 worth of food, but it could have been so much worse. Also, being without internet access gave me more time to go through more of these massive boxes of cards I got from the estate sale. I have SO MUCH to offer to collectors here now! I'll try to get some stuff posted over the weekend.

I love the MS coast! I was down there in early 2006 after Katrina came through. I was helping folks rebuild, but I really liked the people and the area in general. I'd love to get back down there to visit the friends I made and the people I worked for and with back then. I'm guessing that your kids did okay with the storm since it stayed so far east of them this time. The wind would have pushed the water away from them. Where are they... if you don't mind answering? I spent most of my time there around Gulfport and Biloxi. But I spent a bit of time in Moss Point/Pascagoula and Long Beach/Pass Christian. The bridges to Ocean Springs and Bay St. Louis were gone at the time. I still have a piece of the US90 bridge from Biloxi to Ocean City.

Spaz, glad you're ok. Sorry to hear of all the inconveniences, but as you're fully aware, that's all they were for you (just like we had up here back in May when I lost all but 1 tree in the macroburst). Now you can get new carpet! :)

hey spaz.. yeh, it was a nice area there.. my house -- which i own and still there, (my daughter lives in it) is about 3 miles inland of Pascagoula Beach. it filled about 7-9feet of water. My ex and kids were inside at the time katrina came through, they actually had to put the pets in large totes and swim.. yes, swim across the street to a school which was up on a little higher ground. Fortunatly a neighbor had to do the same and broke a window to get into safety. 

i was in the Navy and forced to go to sea for that time period.. it was killing me. i wasn't able to get to the house for the next 2 weeks and even then, you can smell the murky ocean smell and death (of people and animals). no outsiders or first repsonders had come for another 2 addtional weeks. it was horrible. i can go on and on about some of the behind scenes and other BS that was happening but in the end, everyone basically suffered. 

i still go back every few months to visist my kids there. glad to see improvements and other things they've done to the town and surroundings.

Inconveniences are pretty easy to deal with and I'm just glad it wasn't worse. I also lost about a hundred bucks worth of food, but it could have been worse. One of the main reasons I was shoving the water outside was b/c it was getting close to the refrigerator down there. That's an expensive replacement!

As for carpet, that won't happen. This is the second time in 12 years that water came up through the floor. I'll fix that before new flooring goes down. There are 2 bedrooms in the basement and they were already down to the concrete from the last time this happened. The carpet that was pulled up this time went from a bedroom door to the linoleum flooring at the patio door. The house was built in the 1960's and they didn't use waterproofing material b/t the concrete floor and the cinderblock walls. Plus, there used to be a bathroom down there (long before I moved in) and the shower drain wasn't filled in completely. After those issues get fixed, the flooring will be synthetic or vinyl material. Something that won't be damaged by water. My NBA card collection was in the area of the flooding, but the water didn't get to them. I did have to move it and the shelving to pull up the carpet, but the cards were never really in danger. I still need to upload my pics to add them on here. Just been really busy catching up on everything I missed over the past week. BTW, the internet stuff is now all upstairs on the first level instead of in the basement.

Katrina is still the worst damage I have ever seen personally from a tropical system! We've been through a bunch of them here in NC and my family is originally from the coastal area. Before Katrina, the worst I had seen was Hugo in 1989 and Isabel in 2003. But nothing has compared to what I saw in MS! When it hit MS/LA, I was actually traveling along the Great Lakes. It postponed my 1st ever live MLB game in Cleveland, OH as the remnants passed through. There was no reason to go down there shortly after the hurricane hit b/c I knew it would be nearly impossible to get around or get much done to help. I went down there the first week of 2006 and was shocked by how much damage was still visible. I'll never forget the view from US90/Beach Blvd. in Gulfport and Biloxi looking north (inland). There was basically nothing there for several blocks except concrete pads where buildings used to be and a few trees here and there with no leaves or branches left on them. I took about a thousand photos of damage and rebuilding while I was down there. Those 2 bridges being obliterated was shocking and showed the power that storm had. It was nice to be able to hire a few locals to help us while they were out of work due to the storm. One in particular was a father of 2 young daughters. He was a chef at one of the casinos and his wife worked for a different casino. Her job was safe, but his casino was severely damaged and had to shut down for repairs/rebuilding. We gave him steady work for 6 months and he helped us with occassional meals and the use of his shower. The shower was extremely valuable when every single hotel/motel room was booked almost the entire time we were there. Plus he learned a lot from us that I'm sure continues to help him now. He worked for the Treasure Island Casino and their barge got washed inland from the Gulf and ended up sitting on US90 when the water went back out. They still weren't open when we left but had a timeline to open almost exactly 1 year after Katrina hit.

I know that had to be gut-wrenching for you to not be with your family when that happened! The whole reason I was trekking along the Great Lakes at that time was b/c my sister was graduating from Navy Boot Camp in Chicago a few days before the storm. From there, she ended up at Keesler Air Force base in Biloxi for schooling after the storm hit. I still wonder if that was how/why she got into meteorology for the Navy. She spent the next 4 years at the base in Hawaii before going back to Keesler for advanced scholing. Then she went to the Norfolk, VA Navy base and served on the USS Enterprise for a couple of years. She left active duty for the Reserves after that and is now a civilian again as she raises her 2 children.

Back to Michael, my brother and I actually found a way to get people out of our neighborhood the night that Michael hit. But it wasn't easy. This is where my curiousity in the past paid off for something. There were many trees down at the east end of our road (I now know there were 5 and four were HUGE). But there is a road that starts heading southward between the first 2 houses on the north side of the road. The road only shows up on road maps for a short run. But in satellite images, it always looked to me like it went all the way to the next road to the south. Technically, it only goes to one house. But that house owns all the land southward to the next road and has horse pastures on all of that land. They do have a gravel driveway that meanders through the pasture and comes out on the other road. After my brother and I cleared one tree out of the way, we got access to that road/driveway. I wouldn't have tried to get my car through there, but my brother has a 4WD truck. We got out for a bit and then we let the neighbors know they could make the trip if they needed to do so. BUT, there is a gate there at the end and the owners usually lock it at night. My brother let them know the problem and they left it open much later that night so anyone needing that path could get out. They locked the gate about 9pm that night and Duke Energy had the western end of our road cleared by sunrise Friday morning. It was a mile and a half longer route to go that way, but at least we could get out! Power seems to be back to normal now, but there are still trees laying on the side of roads all over the area. We were NOT expecting that strong of wind gusts in central NC after the storm traveled hundreds of miles over land to get here!