About 20 miles or so NE of Raleigh, NC. Certainly not looking forward to this storm. Hopefully have enough water, food, propane, dog food and Makers Mark. But 15 inches of rain.... that could be tough. Add that to no power, ugh. Good luck, and good night...

My police/fire/EMS friends at the beaches I used to work at (from Calabash to Surf City) are going to work Thursday with expectations to stay until further notice. They are sending family and pets out of town, hoping their houses will still be there when they go home.

One of them is telling me that his county's emergency services headquarters is not expected to survive the storm if it is worse-case, and they are moving the EOC further inland.

Another is a supervisor at Kure Beach PD...he says they expect absolute annihilation if they get a direct hit.

My agency has told us to expect all-hands-on-deck on 12-hour shifts, but we will be able to go home between. I've asked to go east if volunteers are needed. Latest track has it coming across the state and dumping rain on us.

this is the rainfall prediction based on that last turn to the west at 2 pm Sun

quote:

Originally posted by p226gsd:
About 20 miles or so NE of Raleigh, NC. Certainly not looking forward to this storm. Hopefully have enough water, food, propane, dog food and Makers Mark. But 15 inches of rain.... that could be tough. Add that to no power, ugh. Good luck, and good night...

The last NOAA cone shows a subtle shift from a direct eye hit on RDU to the Fayetteville area. If it stays that way or even shifts more to the NC/SC border as the European model is predicting, we would be spared the worst of it. Plus it is supposed to slow down immensely which cuts the wind speeds. But increases the rain amounts, obviously. Its going to be a motherfucker and a half no matter where it heads, though, and I'm not happy of others catching the brunt at the expense of our area possibly catching a little break.

As of 7:57 pm eastern.

Yup - it sounds as if Charlotte is in the crosshairs now. Glad to be 6 feet above the damn dam. I think I will master using the grill and green egg if we loose power for too long. During Hugo, most of Charlotte was out of power for 14-16 days.

Camp Lejeune is gonna take a hit. I read that boot camp trainees are being moved inland, and the main base should be released on extended liberty till next Monday, but invariably there will several that stick around base. Hope the Marines are well stocked with booze and tobacco for their typhoon party.

I have several friends in the SC dark green rain zone and one in the NC yellow zone. Praying for all souls affected.

flashguy

Have family at Bragg. Guess they are hunkered down to ride it out. Stores were wiped out.

Price gouging laws are in effect in NC. But danger if a local small engine guy isn't trying to sell used generators for $1,000. Last week he couldn't give 'em away.

I wonder if the Gulf Stream will give this thing the heat to bump it up to a Cat 5 right before it hits? It’s only 30 or 40 miles off the coast.

This should be a lot fun! I finally get to whip out my generator. I was already stocked up on food and water but hit the store for snacks and random stuff. Went to fill up my gas cans, and all the pumps were empty except 89 oct ethanol free, good deal. I have 2 propane tanks and 8 gallons of gas so I think I'll be OK with my Champion 3500 peak 3200 running inverter generator. Just need to keep on the refrigerators and lights. Kind of wish I had gotten the interlock installed. I will keep you guys posted once it gets closer.

quote:

Originally posted by SIG4EVA:
This should be a lot fun! I finally get to whip out my generator. I was already stocked up on food and water but hit the store for snacks and random stuff. Went to fill up my gas cans, and all the pumps were empty except 89 oct ethanol free, good deal. I have 2 propane tanks and 8 gallons of gas so I think I'll be OK with my Champion 3500 peak 3200 running inverter generator. Just need to keep on the refrigerators and lights. Kind of wish I had gotten the interlock installed. I will keep you guys posted once it gets closer.

Email me if you need any help getting power to things. I can walk you through one time emergency set up to get you power in the house.

ETA anyone who needs help on figuring out loads or what mixes of things are OK to run together, email me. I will try to help anyone who has genny questions.

11 pm update. A significant shift to the South

Florence is about 700 miles off the coast.

In simulation, Category 4 hurricane devastated East Coast



ATLANTA – Just months ago, disaster planners simulated a Category 4 hurricane strike alarmingly similar to the real-world scenario now unfolding on a dangerously vulnerable stretch of the East Coast.

A fictional "Hurricane Cora" barreled into southeast Virginia and up the Chesapeake Bay to strike Washington, D.C., in the narrative created by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Argonne National Laboratory.

The result was catastrophic damage, which has some experts concerned that Hurricane Florence could produce a disaster comparable to 2005's Hurricane Katrina and in a part of the country that is famously difficult to evacuate.

The simulated hurricane knocked out power for most gas stations in the Mid-Atlantic region, damaged a nuclear power plant and sent debris into major shipping channels, among other problems, according to a Department of Energy simulation manual.

"What they were trying to do was create a worst-case scenario, but it's a very realistic scenario," said Joshua Behr, a research professor at Virginia's Old Dominion University who is involved in disaster modeling and simulations.

Florence is also a Category 4 storm and is now forecast to strike the same general area. On Tuesday, the National Hurricane Center's "cone" displaying Florence's projected path included the Hampton Roads, Virginia, region where Cora supposedly made landfall.

Senior leaders from the White House, along with more than 91 federal departments and agencies, participated in the "national level exercise" in late April and early May, FEMA said.

The fictional storm made landfall in the heavily populated Hampton Roads region, bringing a 15-foot (4.5-meter) storm surge and up to 9 inches (23 centimeters) of rain to some areas within the first six hours. That cut off main routes — used for escape as well as for rescuers — in the Hampton Roads area and elsewhere.

In the scenario, Cora also slammed hurricane-force winds into three nuclear power stations. One was damaged. Thirty-three major power substations were at risk from storm surge and major flooding.

Key roads and bridges were also damaged, and debris blocked the Newport News Channel and other waterways. Coast Guard Station Cape Charles lost power, and Coast Guard Station Chincoteague was severely damaged by high winds. The ferocious fictional storm also damaged and closed Reagan National Airport in Washington.

The make-believe hurricane threatened hundreds of cell towers, and the area where power was knocked out included 135 data centers in Virginia and another 60 in Maryland.

The Cora scenario projected hurricane-force winds inflicting "catastrophic damage" to homes and significant damage to critical infrastructure within a 50-mile radius of the hurricane's center.

The manual makes no mention of deaths and injuries, focusing instead on infrastructure.

Another striking similarity between the scenario and Hurricane Florence's path: already saturated ground on that part of the Mid-Atlantic coast.

"What I fear is that saturation, combined with a storm that kind of stalls out," said Behr, who has studied vulnerable populations in the paths of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast and in the Hampton Roads region.

If parts of the East Coast are deluged with water, it could result in a catastrophe on the scale of Katrina, Behr said. And recovering from a disaster in the Hampton Roads region would also parallel Katrina's aftermath, he added.

"I believe that those patterns are also going to manifest in Hampton Roads if and when a large storm hits," he said. "The vulnerability of our populations are quite similar to New Orleans. Displacement, pain, suffering, property loss. All those things are going to play out in a fashion that has parallels to how Katrina played out."

Evacuation is known to be challenging in Hampton Roads, a coastal region inhabited by 1.7 million people in cities such as Norfolk, Virginia, and Virginia Beach.

"I've heard people say Virginia Beach is the world's largest cul-de-sac in the sense that there are not a lot of ways to evacuate," said Michelle Covi, an assistant professor of practice with Old Dominion University and Virginia Sea Grant, a science group that works with other universities in the region on coastal issues.

"You can't go north because of the Chesapeake Bay," she said. "You can't really go south, and in this case you wouldn't want to because the storm is that way. You generally want to go west, but again there are lots of water bodies."

In Charleston, South Carolina, where the average elevation is only around 11 feet (3.4 meters) above sea level, storm surge and flooding from a hurricane's drenching rain has the same effect — cutting off access, said Norman Levine, an associate professor at the College of Charleston.

"It inundates roads, and it ends up reaching the point where you become isolated little sea island communities," he said.



http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018...ated-east-coast.html

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
11 pm update. A significant shift to the South

Florence is about 700 miles off the coast.

I live in upstate SC, looks like we are getting a direct hit of what will remain of it.

quote:

Originally posted by SIG4EVA:
This should be a lot fun! I finally get to whip out my generator. I was already stocked up on food and water but hit the store for snacks and random stuff. Went to fill up my gas cans, and all the pumps were empty except 89 oct ethanol free, good deal. I have 2 propane tanks and 8 gallons of gas so I think I'll be OK with my Champion 3500 peak 3200 running inverter generator. Just need to keep on the refrigerators and lights. Kind of wish I had gotten the interlock installed. I will keep you guys posted once it gets closer.

You're going to want a whole lot more gasoline than that. That's 8-14 run hours of fuel for the generator. It might be a week to 2 weeks to find a place to buy gasoline again.

One of the 20 models (UK Metrological - EGR2) is calling for the storm to increase in size and windspeed to a Cat 5 (their model shows 139 knot winds) in approximately 48 hours.

https://www.cyclocane.com/florence-spaghetti-models/

NOAA model suggests that landfall will be between 2PM and 5 PM on Friday, and Friday at 2 AM (approximately 48 hours from now) would put it less than 120 miles off shore. The good news is that Friday low tide is expected at 6:11 PM. The downside is that it is the highest low tide of the month. Friday's high tide (noon) is the third highest high tide of the month.

The 2AM EST time update from NOAA suggests landfall between 4PM and 7PM on Friday.

The Inland track suggests it will follow the Wilmington, NC to Florence, SC to Greenville, SC track.

The ECMWF model has Florence stalling off the Wilmington NC coast, drifting southwest & then making landfall in Georgia.


Everyone be safe!

A 120 hr plot (started at 9/12 00z) from weather.us. At the link users can choose the Model Run, the length of time covered, and can click on map to zoom.