Weather Disasters

[jchamberlin]

A place to post disastrous weather news: Hurricanes from Florida to Carolina, Snowstorms from Maine to Minnesota, Earthquakes in California, and Tornadoes from Texas to Michigan.

Today's story is yesterday's landfall of Hurricane Irene in Eastern North Carolina on a path which kept it about 30 miles to the east of where I live in Farmville. We got winds from the Northeast and Northwest from the time I went to bed Friday night until I got up Sunday morning. We lost power by 8:30 AM Saturday, and the Internet went down about 1:30 PM, and as I write this (7:00 PM Sunday night), we still don't have power, but we do have access to the Internet, if we provide our own power. I'm running a 4.4 Kw unit that is enough for one major circuit at a time (no air conditioning thank you). We lost a tree in the back yard that narrowly missed the shed where I keep my Cub Cadets. There are trees down everywhere. It will probably be three or four days before power is restored to all families.

For most of us here in eastern North Carolina, news of a hurricane means we can expect to be cleaning the yard. In other words, hurricanes mean a great big mess.

Before I learned how devastating this storm had been, I thought I would be looking at was picking up a few branches and pine cones. To that end, I snapped some pictures yesterday during the storm, but just as I went to posting them, I lost my land line and the DSL that went with it. Here are the pictures, better late than never. . .

From the front yard:

Neighbor to the North (siding can be seen blown into the front yard in previous picture)

View of back yard (A sweet gum tree behind left edge of the shed eventually came down, about 50 feet tall and a good 2 ft in diameter at the base.)

The piece of equipment that is making this post possible (along with a about 5 gallons a day of petrol).

The generator is not big enough to power the whole house. I'm considering getting a generator that I could power with the spare QL 12 HP Kohler I have in the shed. I would need to set everything up in a separate building with a disconnect, etc. But it might be worth it. I've only needed it twice in about ten years (I bought it during Hurricane Floyd in 1999), but when you need it, you need it, and it would sure be nice to have AC right now . . ..

 

[kweaver]

Jeremiah - Glad you and the Cubs pulled through.
You'd better check on the wattage that you want to run then look at a bigger generator. Your 12 horse wont do it. To run 10kw you need 16 ponies under da hood.

Back during one of our ice storms we were out of power for a week. I ran the store next door to me and my fridge on a little Lincoln portable welder with a 10 horse Kohler. At the store they would run one cooler at a time then unplug it and plug in another one. When a cooler would kick in it'd almost stall that little Kohler ! I rewired their electric box to tie it into the generator to run their gas pumps as everybody coming in was needing gas to get to work.

 

[jchamberlin]

KentuckyKen: Yeah, we could run one burner on the stove, OR the microwave, OR the hot water heater, but any two together would stall out the motor. We got power again last night about 9:00 PM, just as we were about to sit down to a dinner of magnificent sirloin steaks!

 

[jstertz]

Jeremiah- I have a cousin in the Navy living near Newport News and so as I was thinking of him and how he would fair out in the hurricane. Since you and I had been in discussions about my Cubbie transplant I was thinking of you too. I'm glad that you and yours survived safely. It looks like your property damage was minimal, that is a positive. At least you got a tough little tractor to help clean up some of the
mess!

 

[kmcconaughey]

Jeremiah, good to hear you and the Cubs are OK.

 

[gcoleman]

Just got power back this morning, Irene sure handed our a** to us this time, ive got alot of tree damage all over my area and one tree thats threatening to hit the house if the other tree holding it up decides to let go. Ill post pics later and try to get some while were taking it down. Cub stayed outside during it, I wasn't home, I was very relieved to see it unharmed under its tarp waiting patiently for its job mowing over leaves and small tree trash

 

[kweaver]

Guy on FOX News right now crying 'cause his 109 year old house is gone. Well screw him !

Anybody that'd have a freakin house built on stilts standing in the water ought to have it swept away !

Houses belong on land !

Thanks for raising everyone's house insurance !!!!

My house insurance is due next month and it's almost $100 more than last year ...

Let's build more houses on stilts in the costal waters and let's build more houses on cliffs in California and wait for mud slides ...

I'm tired of selling things to get money to meet my bills for my rotting down house and then have to bail out SOBs that have plenty of money and no damn brains !!

 

[fcurrier]

Ken: Now tell us how you really feel.

 

[mgonitzke]

Ken-

I completely agree. The stupidity I've seen reading news stories on this subject is appalling. One picture slide show I looked at contained pictures of a guy in an inner tube clinging for dear life to a tree, two people trying to escape a sailboat that ran aground on a beach in the middle of the hurricane, and a woman fleeing her van, which was swept away by the storm surge because she drove to the beach and parked it there to get a better look at the storm, among other things. Another article listed the 40 or so fatalities by state with a one-line description for each. It's very sad that most of those people died because they either defied the mandatory evacuations or were out and about when they very clearly should not have been...

 

[kmcconaughey]

KENtucky, agreed!

Boston Globe The Big Picture

 

[kweaver]

My Mom's friend and her family (he's a banker) live on the thin strip of land called Nags Head ... plenty of money and no brains !

I feel for the people that have to work and make do but the ones that live somewhere just because it's the "Status" thing to do I have no tears for them.

It's not like this was the first hurricane to ever hit the coast ...

Look what happened with insurance companies in Florida after their big hurricane a few years ago, they all pulled out !
You can't keep insuring stupidity and stay in biz !

 

[aschumacher]

This is too close to home, 2 houses away from me.

This occured on Sunday at 7am. Fortunately no one was hurt, but there were 5 people inside at the time. This was not a tree we were looking out for. Notice the tree hit the top of the peak, thats the master bedroom, but because the husband got called out(utility co.) the wife and family slept downstairs as aprecaution.
Some irony...the wifes mother lives down in the Shore area and they brought her up here for safety!...oops!
Tree company to be here tomorrow(Wed) to lift off the tree so the family can salvage much of their things.

 

[kide]

KentucK:
You'll like this......Sandy and I had a Home Equity loan that I had paid off earlier this year. I got a certified letter from the bank the other day because FEMA has just declared this area to all be a flood plain and I must purchase flood insurance or they'd buy it for me. If my home ever flooded, it'd be as we we're loading two of each animal into the big boat .. I closed out the loan..(too bad, it was a low interest loan too, and I'd just got them to wave the yearly service fee).
Send FEMA back to the coasts.. the only reason we have any flooding in the spring is that the river about a mile from our place is so choked with dead trees trapping junk that it's like having dams every 100 feet..It used to be a great river for floating and canoeing.

 

[fcurrier]

Darn, Allen, when a tree that size blows over around here (and there's been a lot of them this summer) it brings a root system with it. What was holding that one up in the first place, a tap root or just the roots on the other side of the driveway? Glad no one was hurt and wonder if they'll claim new underwear on their insurance.

 

[kmcconaughey]

Allen, yikes! That tree had a good aim. Good to know no one was hurt. Bummer about the house though.

 

[kweaver]

You guys see Patterson, NJ on Fox News this morning ... Looks like the whole state is under water.
River was 13 feet above flood stage.

Now we have to keep an eye on the storm building up in the Atlantic again.

 

[aschumacher]

Frank, yes it looks like it was missing some of its root support. But there was no good root material at the base of the tree, all soft stuff, not like good tree wood. Same happened to a 100+ft oak across the street. When that was examined 1/2 of the bottom had white mold all over it and again soft root stock.
Kraig, tree is being removed now, insurance co. totaled it. The people were/are in the process of buying a new house anyway, but this is not the way they had planned it.
Kentuck, yes much of NJ has been over whelmed with over flowing rivers. Northern Jersey is known for serious flooding, and a few towns 10 miles south of me are also underwater or just drying out.

 

[kweaver]

I didn't get to hear it all , maybe it'll re-play but the news was saying something about the insurance companies and home owners with hurricane insurance and that Irene was a tropical storm when it came a shore ... not a hurricane.

 

[aschumacher]

As far as I'm concerned, 'hurricane ins' is for severe storms, reg homeowners ins should cover everything else. My hurricane ins says that I have to pay(absorbe) 5% of the damage costs.
PS, Ken I saw the two Hummers(?) that went into the floods and floated around! <font size="-2">Thank you for not saying it was the NJ National Guard)</font>

 

[kweaver]

Allen - Yeah I saw that , didn't know that scuba gear was standard issue. What kept the engine running though ... wasn't a snorkel in sight ??