Glad to hear that! It looks to be a very dangerous storm.
Be safe everyone.
+1
You might still want to have some no-heat-required food in your hotel room, as the hotel itself might lose power - also maybe request a room on the second, third or fourth floors.
I don’t know if we need to to bug out - watching the track - but we do have some prepping to do. I want to make sure we have batteries and our propane lantern is findable, as well as making sure we have sufficient bread / PB&J and so on. We’ve been extremely fortunate in the past in that we’ve never lost power for more than a few hours - the same CANNOT be said of other parts of the DC area.
Other things to think of, for those hunkering down:
- Have battery backups for everything possible (phone chargers etc.). If you use a CPAP or whatever, make extra sure you have something to support that.
- Make sure you know how to open your garage door if the power is out (ours requires us to pull a cord attached to the opener)
- Fill bathtubs with water to use for toilet flushing and maybe handwashing (not for drinking)
- Have a jug of water to use for handwashing especially if hand sanitizer makes you gag
- Have some bottled water (you can fill pitchers with tap water) for drinking
- Fill freezers - zip-loc bags of water if nothing else
- Prefreeze some of those bags of water, and put them in the fridge before things get bad, while you add fresh bags to the freezer itself
- If you’ve got thoughtless household members, tie the fridge doors shut. During Isabel, my daughter tried opening the fridge without thinking, after the power went out.
- Have a bag packed with critical stuff just in case
- If your house has a garage, back the cars up as far as possible to be within an inch of the door - heavy winds can blow the door in and rip the roof off from underneath, and having the cars brace the door will reduce the risk of that happening.
- Bring in lawn furniture if possible. Our table was too big to bring in - so we turned it upside down figuring the wind couldn’t do much with the thin legs, and it had no tabletop to get underneath to send it flying.
Looks like it will come ashore in North Carolina (or maybe northern South Carolina) and will almost certainly coast into Virginia still with 50+ mph winds.
The track shows it less than 10 miles from my house. I’m 10 miles from the ocean, and according to the realtor who sold me this house; “23 feet above mean high tide, so you’re on a virtual mountain here”. We’ll see.
Fill up all cars and any gas cans you may have. The recent hurricanes in Texas and Florida had gas outages far and wide well after the storm because of people hoarding gas.
Have full propane tanks for grills to make cooking easier if you lose power.
Have calorie-dense foods that don’t need refrigeration or cooking: nuts, dried fruits, canned fish, PB&J, energy bars, trail mix, etc. Have sweet treats like frosted cookies, candy, jelly beans, etc. to break the monotony.
Clean out gutters so that the water doesn’t back up.
Bring in outdoor stuff that could become airborne, such as patio furniture, plants, toys, etc.
Pack your freezer with water bottles or other containers. They’ll freeze up and can be used for cooling and drinking later.
Don’t park cars under trees since branches may fall. Consider parking your car on an upper floor of a parking garage to keep it safe from debris and flooding.
If you have a pool (and there is water in it) you can throw patio furniture into the pool to keep it safe.
They have called for evacuation of the whole SC coast now, including reversing highways.
I was at Myrtle Beach just a few days ago–seems odd to think that it will potentially be significantly changed from what it was then less than a week from now. (I remember going there after Hugo, seeing the stairs at the end of boardwalks hanging mid-air and concrete septic tanks sitting on bare ground.)
Yep, “gas panic” can cause difficulties even if actual supply is only minimally disrupted.
BTW be sure the car battery is in good shape. With the key to the “Acc” position your car can be your biggest, most expensive sit-in cell phone recharger.
And air conditioner (well, you’d want to run the engine a bit for that…)
Er… 23 feet above average high tide which means it could be higher, and the storm surge is predicted to be 10-20 feet, so…
Though I doubt it’d be anything like that high, that far inland.
We were at Isle of Palms last summer for the eclipse. The place we stayed at was a few blocks from the beach, and when we walked to the shore we passed between the oceanfront mansions. All were separated from the actual waterfront by fairly high dunes (man-made) - which I presume would reduce the potential storm surge damage. I’d still be sweating bullets if I owned one of those places. Hell, the place we stayed at may be oceanfront next week :(.
Anyone considering evacuating, I’d suggest you make hotel reservations NOW. Rooms within any reasonable distance will be at a premium starting tomorrow as the mandatory evacuations go into effect.
We’ve got some sofa space if anyone makes their way up to the DC area; I expect we’ll see a LOT of rain and possible power outages but we’re not in a flood-prone area, so we’re not planning on going anywhere.
I think that’s a smart move. Your description of the road in and out of your place, and the waterlogged ground, made it sound like potential trouble. Just in case the power goes out in Charlottesville, make sure you have your phones fully charged, and a back-up charging unit fully charged, and, as someone else suggested, some no cook food and beverages, and a rechargeable weather radio.
But I hope it turns out to be simply a nice vacation getaway, and you have no problems.
All Dopers in the paths of Florence and Olivia, stay safe. Though I’m glad that Florida and Puerto Rico aren’t in the crosshairs this time, I feel for everyone who is.
But I am having second thoughts. Yes the road going in and out of our home is almost certain to get washed out. But there are others living up in the nooks and crannys here. We would not be completely isolated. We have about a week’s worth of fresh water.
The biggest issue I see is our dogs. It sounds corny, but they are like our children. I love those two dogs to death, and if we cart them into town to the hotel for at least a week I can see all sorts of problems. The little dog was hit by a car several years ago and lost an eye. Since that accident she has been very skittish around people and sometimes tries to bite. But she is really a sweet animal just shy. Odie the older dog is scared of storms. The hotel we booked says pets are OK… but I am concerned. There is no one we know in Town to stay with if something goes wrong at the hotel.
Secondly, just about everything my wife and I have is tied up in our house. I love our little house in the woods. If a tree were to fall on it or there was some other damage we might be able to mitigate the damage if we are here. The loss of the house in a mudslide is a very worst case scenario. Yes it happened to homes nearby during Camille, but that was 27 inches in six hours. I hate the thought of going away for who knows how long and not being able to protect our property. We will certainly lose power and wifi early on and probably for a long period of time.
If we stay in the hotel my wife and I would probably each have to try and go to work. We both are mid level grocery store managers and the hotel is less than a mile in each direction from each of the our stores. As you might imagine, the stores have been crazy the last couple of days. We’d probably each have to split time working if we are in Town. I think power outages in Town are also certain.
I don’t know what to do.
If there’s flooding of the access road, mudslides or trees falling, you cannot mitigate anything, and you could find yourself getting hurt, as well as your property. There was a member on another forum who had a tree come down in a previous hurricane, and nobody could get in or out to their property because it blocked their access road. I think it’s better to be on the outside where you have access to supplies, than on the inside and having limited supplies. It took some time for the “chopper people” to get to cutting up the tree, because they were going around to all the people who had issues. It can take some time.
My little dog is a rescue and a bit of a yapper. I think he’d be fine in a hotel (not that any hotels here allow dogs) with me. Usually dogs are fine if they are with “their pack”.
I think going into town sounds like a sound plan, but obviously it’s your decision.
^Agree. Things are replaceable. You, your wife, and dogs are not. Stay with your plan and go to the hotel. It looks like from the forecast your area is going to get a ton of rain, and potentially damaging winds. You all are safer in town for this one.
Old Town Alexandria is flooding along the waterfront and it’s not even raining yet.
I’m on a hillside but I’m worried about my basement. All my possessions are down there. Going to look into getting a little pump in case there’s seepage.
You might also want to get some Damp Rid buckets to deal with any residual moisture.
My view, FWIW.
A few years ago our house was in danger of sea-flooding. A big storm with high tide and we’re in a low-lying area. It was pretty much nailed-on. There was danger to life and property and but we were all prepared to wait it out. We had a day or so to get ready so prepped the house as much as possible, got supplies, moved the car to a dry place, moved valuable upstairs etc. etc.
It was incredibly stressful at that point, then in the few hours left we were sitting in the house, waiting for the inevitable and utterly unable to do anything more and powerless to do anything if/when the waters came.
My wife and I looked at each other and decided to get out. We booked a hotel a few miles away on high ground, took the kids and left.
Best decision ever. Once we were away from the house our minds settled down. We’d done what we could, we couldn’t do anything more even if we remained and at that point the damage was in the lap of the wind gods and Neptune. We slept soundly. fully expecting to find flood damage in the morning.
We were lucky, the tide was slightly lower than expected, the wind went slightly offshore and the flood defences were only just high enough so no flooding occurred but even so I’m glad we did it.
In the case of Florence I think it is a certainty that bad things are going to happen and given that I’d be even more eager to get away and the quicker the better.
Good luck and best wishes to all involved.
Agree.