Amazing videos from the other side of the globe (from me) affected by Typhoon Manghkut. Click on the Twitter link to see the whole thread (tons of videos).
Wow those are nuts
My sister is back in the states. She had a delay in Manila due to the typhoon, but it wasn’t especially long.
Glad to hear she’s home safe.
Wilmington NC is pretty much isolated from the rest of the country except for via emergency helicopter. The roads coming into and out of the city are all flooded and/or closed; the airport is closed; the port is closed. Electricity is spotty with some folks having it and others not.
We haven’t (yet) managed to get a read on my daughter’s rented house. It could be high and dry or it could be completely flooded. The girls staying at my place have been in touch with a boyfriend who stayed in Wilmington, but he was unable to reach the neighborhood due to downed trees; his impression was that there wasn’t much flooding, but there is a creek just a couple lots away from my daughter’s house.
My plan is to take a day or two off and drive back down to Wilmington with her. Best case, I spend a day helping her neighborhood clear trees; worst case we pick through her belongings to see what is salvageable. That “worst case” is still pretty benign: she’s a college kid after all. The only thing she owns that is even remotely valuable is a sleigh-style bed that once belonged to her great-grandmother.
But that’s in the future. UNCW sent out an email today that says that the campus will remain closed for the rest of this calendar week. And they stress that that’s just a placeholder to stop people from wondering if they’ll have any classes this week; the actual date to reopen might not be for several weeks.
In the meantime, I have three college kids crashing at my place. After seeing that they’re not going back this week, I briefly considered sending them home to hang with their own parents. One is from Vermont and another from Colorado. But then I remembered that the third girl is actually from Wilmington, and she actually can’t get home to her parents at all. They’re all great kids and good guests… the only bad thing I can say about them is that most of them are vegans, which makes cooking meals problematic.
I’m the designated cook for tonight’s meal: Fried rice with a pickled bean salad on the side.
Yikes. You’re a great person to take care of them, Tin. Hopefully things are okay for the rental house, but it just seems like this water is going to take a LONG time to lower. I think your original prediction on no school for the rest of the semester will be pretty close to true.
You are a seriously good dude, man. And yeah, the situation in Wilmington is just crazy-pants. It feels like a bad movie/videogame plot: AN ISOLATED CITY. DEVASTATION ALL AROUND. CAN YOU SURVIVE: FAR CRY: WILMINGTON?!
I’m worried for my friends out in the western chunk of NC. They’re getting slammed with the rain now and there’s a high chance of some nasty mudslides.
Somehow Raleigh basically managed to escape almost all of the worst of this. We had some flooding in the places that always flood, but the storm basically managed a perfect arc around us. Cities 25-50 miles to the east, south, and even west are in much worse shape than we ever were.
Thanking my lucky stars for that. Started winnowing down my spare water supplies yesterday (about 8 washed out milk and coke containers). The gf is already hitting the no power snacks like there’s no tomorrow :)
Tin, you might take interest to the Mayor’s comments here:
Charlotte has been really lucky as well. It moved south of the majority of it, then north around the western edge. We have some very southern spots in Charlotte with flooding, but truly we’ve been very lucky.
Thanks for that.
I advise not reusing milk containers for this except in urgent situations. They hold onto some milk product and are very hard to clean enough to keep water uncontaminated. Also the thin plastic (HDPE) and lids are not durable and degrades easily in UV so definitely don’t use for long term storage. Soda bottles are much better in all respects.
Armando: survived the hurricane, but undone by contaminated milk-water!
(In all seriousness, I was a little dubious about those even after a couple of hearty soap-water-shakey-rinse routines and just dumped that water, while trying to actually use the stuff in the 2 Liters)
Yeah, they leak after a couple months. I had a gallon milk-type container of distilled water in my closet and it leaked.
Oh yikes, I used to live in south Charlotte near Pineville, hope they’re doing ok.
Pineville isn’t too bad, but Matthews and Indian Trail got quite a bit. This page has a rainfall map near the bottom, I think that’s missing today but there has been little rain today that I’ve seen:
Very nice of you to accommodate, but OTOH it’s a time for them to adapt for a few days and do what it takes.
“Girls, it’s time. Look, rations are low. Either we kill Becky here and survive, or we … we eat bacon.”
“I have one question for you all in this trying time: crispy or chewy?”
So this is the part where someone reminds our Federal government that any sicknesses, death, damage and associated “bad” things that are currently happen can still be attributed to the hurricane even though the wind has stopped?
At least the Iowa hog farmers that were screwed over by the China trade war now have a customer for their products.