I’m in Raleigh and we’re not supposed to get more from this hurricane than a couple inches of rain and a few good wind gusts. The extent of my preparation has been to make sure we have ingredients for sangria and to take the badminton net down. Things haven’t always been so easy for us, though! I was here in Raleigh for Hurricane Fran (1996) and lived on the coast of SC for almost a decade. We were in an apartment two blocks from the beach for most of those years.
My best hurricane story, though, is about the last Hurricane Irene, in 1999. We planned our wedding to be in my parents’ backyard, in Swansboro, NC (on the coast, north of Wilmington). The area was still recovering from Hurricane Floyd, which had caused huge flooding and destruction. Although Irene didn’t make landfall in NC, it came creeping up the coast on the day of our wedding, 10/16. That whole day, we were getting bands of rain. Unbelievably, everything cleared up in time for the ceremony and pictures (with a fantastic sunset). We got hammered during the reception, though. One of the groomsmen loaned me his Australian Army-issued Driza-bone to wear over my wedding dress. The rain was sheeting down and the generator to the tent blew, so my dad and another of the groomsmen were out there trying to get it going again (probably not the safest endeavor). The wedding guests started singing the theme from Titanic.
My husband and I were supposed to spend that night on Emerald Isle and we went ahead over there. We received a call in the middle of the night that we had to evacuate, so we headed back to my parents’ house. That morning, the local airport was closed down. My husband is Australian and a whole group of his childhood and college buddies had flown over for the wedding and were now stuck. They all headed over to my parents’ house, too. We spent the day drinking margaritas and teaching them how to pick crabs. My dad put them to work pulling up the planks on his dock (it allows the water to come through and keeps the dock from floating away). We all spent the night on the floor of my parents’ living room - an interesting start to our honeymoon!
Hurricanes can be scary and horrible, but most people I know who’ve been through them have at least a few good stories.
Floyd, that was it’s name. I moved to Wilmington about a week before that one hit. The eye went right over, so my house mate and I drove around a bit to check on friends during the lull.
I had one of the best meals of my life during a hurricane, Gloria maybe?, sometime around 1990. I was working at a summer stock theatre that had a restaurant associated with it. We knew the storm was coming and the restaurant owners decided that it would be better to have a dinner for the cast and crew rather than let the food go bad in the power went out. Lobster, mussels, steak, corn on the cob. All cooked on a wood stove because of the power outage.
Back when I was much younger, Hurricane Donna hit us on Long Island, the eye going right over our house. I remember going outside in the calm; the air felt incredibly wet and heavy. We thought it might be the eye (even though it was not predicted to be hitting us), so we went in after a few minutes and before the wind came up again. I remember watching the storm from the big picture window in our living room. Damage was minimal (the storm had weakened considerably by that time), but it was memorable.
I actually slept through Fran. I woke up the next morning, went outside and saw an unbelievable amount of damage. The area of Raleigh I lived in was an older neighborhood with oak-lined streets. It seemed like nearly every one of those massive oak trees was lying on the ground or on someone’s roof. I lived right near Crabtree Creek and the water had come up, blocking the streets out of the neighborhood. Electric lines were down in the water, so you couldn’t even walk out. We were without power for ten days and they sent the national guard in to patrol the streets at night. It was eerie. During the day, the whole neighborhood helped chainsaw trees and clean up.
My husband and I stayed during one of the Cat 1 hurricanes in Myrtle Beach (I can’t remember the name). We lived in a condo and we were evidently the only ones there who didn’t evacuate. Late that night, after the storm had died down, we heard someone come up our stairs and try to open our door. My husband yelled and whoever it was ran away. I’m guessing it was someone trying to take advantage of an apparently unattended neighborhood. That was probably the scariest hurricane-related experience I’ve had.
Good story, Earl. It does seem like these things always hit in the middle of the night. Gov. Perdue (NC) even mentioned that yesterday - that Irene was the first hurricane in her memory to make landfall during daylight.