Speaking as a Northeastern North Carolinian, I have to ask what happened out west?
Hurricane Helene happened (although it was a tropical storm when it hit us). We got 15 inches of rain in 2 days, some areas got 30 inches in that period. Roads gone, bridges gone, cell towers down, houses floating away, landslides, power out for everyone.
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Ooh, that’s really really bad! Glad you guys are safe (well, safe as in not floating down the street).
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I’m really glad you’re okay, although sorta sad that your Smoky Mountain retreat became so hazardous. I’ve been watching various parts of North Carolina float downstream since Friday, so it’s a sincere relief you’re okay. I hope the power holds out.
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@inventor200 says:
“The wind decided too many people were feeling safe with flushing toilets, internet access, and refrigeration, and thought we could all be brought down a few pegs.”
(They have limited service right now and can’t get the forums to load so several of us are relaying info to them via discord. They’re extremely glad to hear that you weren’t in the path!)
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Last year during the terrible heat and drought in Texas, I blithely said that I knew I couldn’t get away from climate problems anywhere; I just wanted a different set of problems. I sure did get them. The ocean’s worth of water crushing the mountains is a flashier and more immediate problem than the droughts in TX, but I don’t know if I think it’s worse than lying awake night after night waiting for the wildfire. To be fair, our four months here have been absolutely idyllic until Helene came. And at least it’s not crushingly hot.
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I’m wrong or the atlantic hurricanes are making landfall increasingly northward ? IIRC roughly 20 or so years ago, an hurricane hitting SC was a rare exception, landfalls on CONUS happening usually in FL, AL and GA…
(hope to have put right state abbreviations…)
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
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They are landing northward more often, but Helene made landfall on the west coast of Florida, so a perfectly normal hurricane in that regard. It just continued to tear a path northward over land after that. It apparently was at the upper limit of how big a hurricane can physically be, so it was enormous and tenacious.
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Helene hit land on the Florida panhandle. It just plowed inland really hard. But back in the 90’s when I lived in NC there were two hurricanes that really pounded us hard, so it’s nothing new. Not to say climate change isn’t real, though.
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NE NC born and raised and trapped here and hurricanes are just a normal thing for my family, though Fran(for getting far enough inland to drench Raleigh during my first year at the school for the blind), Floyd(for turning several small towns into lakes), and Isabelle(For being the beginning of the end for my childhood home) stand out. The odd part is that a hurricane hit the mountains, especially after coming up from Florida. Conventional wisdom is that such storms peter out before they can get that far inland.
And yes, I’d rather weather a hurricane than a heat wave.
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