I remember post-Hugo we had several days of dawn-to-dusk chainsaw sounds in the neighborhoods. Felled trees were everywhere. I don’t even own a chainsaw, here’s hoping my neighborhood isn’t too bad.
I feel for the SC coast if it veers too far south. The lowlands there are going to take a beating.
Yeah… I’m expecting lengthy power loss for sure. And thus to be bored out of my skull, heh.
Seriously though, man, take care out where you are, too. It’s already been a crazy rainy summer. I feel like a lot of the state is gonna be flooding like mad. Esp if this thing decides to just camp out on the NC/SC border for the whole weekend.
I’m optimistic, but I’m a bit further west. Triad usually lucks out on these storms. Gonna be a crap weekend though and don’t expect I’ll be able to eat out much.
We should be even better here in Charlotte. Let’s hope it isn’t as bad as all these reports they are projecting.
I would add to cram your freezer full of water containers now to get as much ice as possible, and make sure you have a large well insulated cooler to put them in once you lose power.
That first week without power after Sandy, having that extra ice (and the cooler - which kept it from thawing for a week) was a godsend.
I’d also fill a bathtub with water (for non-potable uses, like cleaning dishes etc). You can never have too much water (in containers).
So my sister is in the Philippines, and they have one too. She assures me it is not projected to hit her island, and now it’s my duty to keep my family here from freaking out because USA news isn’t as good at reporting the other ones.
Yeah, bathtub for washing and then flushing toilet. In that order. Freezer packed with bags of ice cubes from ice maker in my case. Melted ice is more potable water.
I was here near NCSU for Fran in '96, and my power was out for 7 days. As long as the flooding is not out of control, the worst tragedy for most folks will be loss of a freezer full of food, and the mania from having no internet access for a few days.
Having no power for 4 days last year at Irma showed me how screwed we are in the apocolypse. The retardedness of people in my neighborhood was unbelievable. The constant bitching and trying to encourage everyone else to bitch at the power company and self entitlement was just mind boggling.
Meanwhile my wife and I just shrugged and made the best of it with the understanding that millions of people (literally) were without power and we probably aren’t the highest priority.
That may have been unique to your neighborhood.
Ours just took stuff out of the freezer, wheeled our grills into the cul-de-sac and had an open cookout. Yes everyone bitched because of the heat and humidity but none of us were encouraging each other to inundate FPL with calls. It would do no damn good anyway. But after a while that heat and humidity can become life-threatening to the sick and elderly so it is not simple entitlement. Air conditioning in FL can be a necessity for some people. Which is why my 80+ year old parents spent the better part of 4 days at my home since I was the one who got power back first.
None of the people ranting were sick, elderly, or even had young kids. I 100% agree that would have been a different story.
edit: whee!
Re:power cuts… given that hurricanes are relatively frequent, and given that its pretty sunny… why don’t more people on the US east coast have some solar panels and an off-grid switch?
I live in the UK… zero chance of a hurricane taking out the power grid, and yet even here, if we had room in the house to put one somewhere sensible, I’d hook up a tesla powerwall to store solar power in case the power goes out. (I’m rural and we get maybe 2-3 powercuts a year, usually only a few hours).
I know historically this was expensive, but solar power /energy storage is getting cheap as hell. Why isn’t this a big thing?
I actually had a quote this year for solar panels. I was told that in order to have power from the panels during an outage, I’d actually have to buy an incrediblly expensive battery… like the battery itself was almost the same cost as getting the panels including installation. Without the battery, the panels won’t supply the house during an outage.
The cost for the panels was around 30k minus some tax breaks. The battery was somewhere around 20k. That others were a little less on the panels but the batteries still expensive.
40-50k is not doable for a lot of people, probably most.
Perhaps a better question is: why in the world are most of our power lines above ground instead of buried??
I should also mention those go on the roof which I assume a number of people will lose due to the high winds.
Costs. Especially when you’re talking about how damn big the country is.
I think I noted upthread that my daughter goes to school in Wilmington NC and they shut down the university for this week. Most of the students lit out for their nearby hometowns, and the out-of-state students largely followed them, begging air-mattress space.
Well, I guess a lot of them are starting to think better of sleeping on a couch in Raleigh with no power for days on end and they are migrating to less-rainy climes. Apparently there are five of my daughter’s friends driving north as we speak, their sights set on my basement.
And that’s not a big deal; I’m happy to help out displaced college kids. Heck, I’d be happy to house Armando and his lady-love if they need it. In fact, I’d prefer that since all these kids are vegans and I’m fairly sure I could guilt Armando into cooking for me.
Hah! If I didn’t have a concert to try to drive to Saturday, I’d actually consider it man
