I’ve never seen a storm quite like this one. She’s got the biggest eye I’ve ever seen, or close. Moreover, she never seems to weaken much. I know that cold water will take some of the steam out of her. OTOH, she has a lot of steam.
Hugo is a good example of a storm which maintained significant strength as it moved inland. I would expect a storm like this one to carry some serious power inland for at least 50 miles, assuming… Well, too much.
It’s present predicted track will take it right over my property in N. Virginia. Mt. Weather lives up to its name. Glad I just chopped the valuable trees down. Beats hauling them off the property in chunks.
If you had been here for Fran and Floyd, you’d be panicking too. Raleigh here. We lost power for a week from Fran (a category 2–this one if category 4-5) and cable TV for a month. There was only one way out of our neighborhood, because all other streets were blocked by massive downed oaks.
the plywood on windows thing is for the coastal areas. We may get 40-50 mph winds, but unlikely to be strong enough to break windows in the Triangle. Problem in our areas is flooding from the creeks and streams, and renters insurance doesn’t cover rising water. If you are on the bottom floor, and near (i.e. less than 1/4 mile from) a creek, I’d advise you to put all electronic equipment and anything else you don’t want flooded up off the floor. apartment/townhome developers in the Triangle area are notorious for building rental communities in floodplains.
Well, not much you can do…if the trees behind you are pines, I wouldn’t sleep on the top floor. Pines snap like matchsticks, and the deaths in interior due to Fran were trees falling on people in their beds and squishing them like bugs. Think a chimney fell on one victim. good news…this storm will hit during the day on Thursday, so you can huddle in the basement and wait for it to pass.
Thanks for the info/advice, everybody. It looks like Isabel has been downgraded to a Category 3, so maybe it won’t have much effect on us, other than wind and rain.
Our local officials are telling us to prepare for the worst, so we’ve bought some bottled water and extra flashlights, etc. I wish there was some way to know what was upon us, though. I hate buying supplies we don’t necessarily need at the moment. I suppose it’s better to be safe, anyhow.
You will need those supplies. Every year, June to November, we go through this. And regardless of hurricanes, what you’re really stockpiling is power-outage supplies. Fresh water, flashlights and batteries, a radio or two, canned food…
Ain’t like the power’s never been down for a day or so outside of hurricane season, right?
And if all else fails, have yourself an end of season BBQ (yeah, even if it is snowing early) with all the perishables in the beginning of December.
For those down in the OBX area… what do you anticipate things will be like Friday/Saturday after the storm? I ask because Mr. Winnie & I have reservations for a long weekend down in Nags Head for our anniversary from this Friday the 19th - 21st. Our initial reaction was to cancel everything, but now we see that the bulk of the storm is hitting Thursday. Is it worth us going down there after the fact?
I would go ahead and cancel. There’s no way of telling if this is going to tear up the Outer Banks or not. At the very least, most of the roads will be blocked with sand and that takes a few days to move. Better safe than sorry.
I figured that was the answer. Now that they’re officially evacuating the OBX area and the schools are closing it will probably be chaos this weekend anyway. Plus the evacuation might still be in effect as of Friday/Saturday.
I was up in Philadelphia when Floyd hit, so all we got was sheets of rain. I live inland from the ocean, but only about 15 miles from Annapolis, so if Isabel comes up very high on the Chesapeake Bay, we’re in trouble. :eek:
Our local news channel, NBC 17, is reporting that although Isabel has been reduced to a Cat 2, it may regain its strength by landfall. The tv weather guy has even marked it back up to a 3 for his Wed. prediction.
He’s a weather guy, though, so he may be completely wrong.
Yes. Yes I noticed that.
The fun part is, I work Weds night, get off Thurs morning. I should be okay for that. But… They expect me to come back in Thurs night. I’d be driving from Harpers Ferry into DC during this crap. I don’t really want to do that.
We usually see footage of people boarding up their businesses in preparation for the coming hurricane. Thanks to the Bush economic plan, they’ve already got it done!
People, I wouldn’t feel relieved by “category” drops unless it goes down off of hurricane class altogether, and then what you have is one awesome mother of a rainstorm. (I have sat through a low-grade Cat-2 and we were not happy for over 10 days afterwards) The good part of it is that such a drop usually happens really quickly once landfall on the continent is made.
Well, ol’ Isabel has forced me to bump my travel plans ahead 24 hours - I’ll be flying to Balto on Friday evening, assuming things have calmed enough by then for planes to land. I wanted to switch to next week, but Southwest wouldn’t allow that. At least not without paying extra. Oh well…
Spousal unit added dock lines to our boat, and extra fenders. He loaned more dock lines to others in the marina and helped convince one semi-braindead boat owner that it would be wise to remove the canvas enclosure from his boat and store it. Honestly, some people are too stupid to own boats - yet another reason to support licensing of boaters, but I digress…
I’m not as worried as I was earlier - looks like at worst, Baltimore may get 50MPH winds - not good, but not too outrageous. I told my sweetie that he should park his car under a tree (he really hates his car…) He is moving his motorcycle to a more sheltered area of the parking lot.
So anyway, we’re as ready as we’re gonna get, and it didn’t take any plywood.
It’s probably too late now, but I was browsing around NOAAs web pages and they were showing how to make the best of plywood shutters. (Let’s see if I can explain this properly) The boards were cut to recess into the window frame. Holes were drilled into the window frame parallel to the plane of the plywood, not perpendicular. They then added barrel bolts to the plywood, similiar to the ones you see on bathroom stalls sometimes. That way, the plywood is recessed so that wind can’t get under it and the thing is reusable, just undo the bolt and store it.
As I proofread that I find it impossible to understand, so I just went and found the website.
