Ernesto made landfall just before midnight around Long Beach, North Carolina. Then it moved through my county, with what would have been the eye, moving northward just east of my house. I mean… waaay to close for any comfort.
We are experiencing some flooding. But it’s still a fairly long time before daylight, so I am unable to make any accurate reports on wind damage. Although, I don’t believe there is a great deal of wind damage, here, in my neck of the swamp.
Flooding is going to be the problem, it would seem. At 3 AM EDT, this morning, I emptied my outside rain gauge and it had 5-1/2 inches of rain in it. (I have an electronic rain gauge, but for accuracy, I still prefer the "old faithful" manually emptied gauges. They’re hard to beat!)
I can’t give you totals because the storm is not over for us, but as of 11:00 PM last night, Wilmington, NC, had 8 inches of rain with 62 MPH winds. The southern part of my county had 8 inches of rain and 50 to 60 mph winds (at 11 PM last night). Bald Head Island, at that time, was experiencing 70 mph winds. Some hiways were flooded and impassable
We are in the period, which follows everyone of these storms, when everyone is exhausted... and we just want it over, so we can begin making the necessary repairs, and adjustments, and get on with our lives… which we had to put on hold for nearly a day.
Let me point out something. At the risk of sounding cavalier, this storm was , well, not much! The media made far too much of Ernesto. Ernesto is the kind of storm that gets people killed... when the NEXT BIG STORM comes through!
Why?
Because the media hype convinces those newly moved to the area that hurricanes are not nearly as bad as they have been led to believe and when the BIG ONE DOES come along, they do not pay attention, and they do not do those simple things that will save their lives and, as a result, they lose their lives.
The media is doing no one any favors by hyping the storms as they have been, and continued to do, through last night. You can bet, that today, you will see shots, on TV, of damage that looks awful. It will be… but it will be the worst damage they can find to plaster all over your TV screen.
The eye of the storm (had there been a clearly defined eye at that point) passed me by by hundredths of “minutes” longitudinally and latitudinally. It is still very dark out side as I write this and as a result I have not had the advantage of an “eyes on survey” yet. But I do not expect a lot of damage.
Thanks to all of you who contacted us with your best wishes. It is always gratifying.
We can fuss at each other, on this site, but we are brother and sister Americans and the remainder of the world has an extremely difficult time grasping the bond between Americans, even those of us who vehemently disagree.
So, “clean up” begins at dawn and we get our lives back on track and get on with it.
Another storm weathered!
Longstreet
Here in Ohio we don't get hurricanes, but we do get thunderstorms with 60, 70 sometimes (rarely) near 80 mph, which is what this "hurricane" seemed to be. The biggest thing we worry about is Tornados, and Hurricanes can produce a few of those. Glad that all is well for you and yours sir.
ReplyDeleteI don't believe this storm ever reached hurricane strength. if it did, it was only briefly.
ReplyDeleteFrank.. two years ago we in Northern Kentucky and parts of Ohio got the remnants of two hurricanes.. and that caused enough damage, LOTS of flooding.. I lived through several hurricanes and was terrified of the remnantas of the two we got up here.. reminders of 'home', which was a few miles south of Wilmington, NC..
ReplyDeleteAnyhow.. I had been thinking of you today Longstreet and finally got a chance to get on to check on how you were doing. Glad to hear you and yours are well.
We haven't heard from my family in Brunswick county as of this evening and I don't know why.. in a situation like this (many down there are without electricity from what I understand).. the authorities always advised us not to keep the phone lines busy unless it was an emergency, so maybe they are all fine and just not tying up the lines.. I hope that is what is going on, and I'm sure we will hear from them over the weekend.. if not we're gonna begin to make some calls ourselves.
Wow, makes me thankful that we are just having a little shower here in Minnesota. Good luck with the storm, and hope you make it through with little or no problems.
ReplyDeleteGreat blog by the way. This is why the blogosphere is so wonderful!