Who would've guessed the safest place to be in a hurricane was right on the coast? But that's exactly what happened over the weekend. That's how I felt, and as I noticed at work today, that's clearly how many people felt. Although all of our yards have large piles of debris and look like this
and uprooted trees are rather ubiquitous since the only ones that have been cleared were blocking roads and power lines,
we all recognize how lucky we were.
I'm used to people telling storm stories, whether from tropical weather or winter storms, where everyone tells how bad they had it. But this was the exact opposite. Everyone downplayed their stories in gratitude, until some of them sounded reminiscent of the Black Knight in Monty Python. "Our power was out for 24 hours and our water was out for 16 hours, but no big deal." "A coworker is stranded in Lumberton and is running out of food and water, but at least the flood water isn't getting to her house." Just a flesh wound.
For us the storm adventure first began last Sunday, October 2 when I checked the weather on my phone before getting out of bed in the morning and happened to notice something kinda icky brewing. Although I typically ignore tropical weather until it gets much closer, this one seemed to suck me in, and after living here for nearly 9 years, I found myself dutifully checking for updates every 4 hours. I couldn't let it go.
On Tuesday afternoon things got real when the afternoon update suddenly showed Wilmington getting a direct hit from a strong Category 2 storm. Yikearooni. That's when UNCW decided to evacuate students by noon on Thursday. Tuesday night while the boys were at karate I decided to make a supply run, just in case the forecast didn't change, and people went crazy at the store later in the week. I found Target already out of cases of water. Thankfully the grocery store was much better prepared and had filled all of the perimeter aisles with pallets of bottled water.
After all the Tuesday drama, the forecast looked much better Wednesday and Thursday. Lots and lots and lots of rain, but for the most part, Wilmington can handle that. Our soil is sand, which is lousy for gardening, but great for draining heavy rain. And the neighborhoods built after Hurricane Floyd have retention ponds and drainage ditches and other modifications to help manage storm water.
Thursday night as I was going to bed I got a voicemail from the power company saying to "anticipate prolonged power outages." I had never gotten a message like this before and didn't know if it was ominous or comical given that it arrived at 10:30 and the first bands of heavy rain arrived around 3am Friday morning and didn't let up until around 4:30. Not exactly a lot of time to prepare if you hadn't done so already!
I had to work Friday morning, and campus was mostly shut down with the students all evacuated.
There was no Subway to eat
and no Jamba Juice to drink.
The forecast was for 12 - 18" of rain and while Wilmington IS built for rain, the amount of standing water already on the ground was a bit disconcerting.
Everything changed around 11am when everyone's cell phones began vibrating madly. Unexpectedly, Wilmington had just been upgraded to a hurricane warning. The rains looked like they would be mostly to the west, but we were anticipating heavier winds. Work was suddenly a flurry of activity as we went to really close up show.
UNCW closed at noon on Friday. Given the storm upgrade, when I got home, Jeff and I went to work on the yard. While we were busy moving everything to the garage, the kids played a giant game of Dungeons and Dragons with our tile floors and their stuffed animals.
Friday afternoon was relatively quiet as we waited for Matthew to arrive in earnest. When Natalia learned I had the afternoon off from work, she planned a flurry of activities for me to do with her, and we managed to get in the first of many Mommy-Talia crafts.
Saturday morning we woke up to a tornado warning. I spent so long in bed contemplating what to do, that the warning thankfully expired before I had to take action. At that point I was wide awake, so I moved on to the delicious task of using up as much perishable food as possible before we lost power. So we had chocolate chip pancakes and blueberry smoothies for breakfast, then Natalia and I made banana bread. The power flickered a few times while the banana bread was baking, but it was able to finish baking.
While we had power, I also worked on cleaning the house, and while I cleaned, the kids painted.
We lost power around 1:45 in the afternoon, while watching NC State play football in abysmal conditions (although it was fun to watch the waves of water come off the field any time someone was tackled). Amazingly, our power was only off for about 90 minutes.
Things actually improved in the late afternoon, but around dinnertime the winds began picking up again, and by 7pm the house was shaking and our front door, which is recessed and protected by a large porch, was shaking. There is a very tall tree in our backyard that makes me nervous, so to keep the kids away from it and the wall of glass windows in our living room in the back of the house, I had a sleepover with the kids in the girls' room on Saturday night. Despite the storm noise, the kids actually slept great. I think they were just happy to all be together.
We woke to a beautiful, if cool, day on Sunday. There were still strong winds in the morning, but it was a clear blue sky. Looking out on our street, I didn't see much damage aside from our neighbor's mailbox that had blown over. It wasn't until I tried to go grocery shopping around 1pm that it dawned on me that there really was storm damage. I drove by our old neighborhood and saw that everyone's 6' wooden privacy fences had blown down. I tried to go to Walmart but it was without power and closed until further notice. When I spoke to a lady at the grocery store working in the produce section, she said that there were power lines down with live wires all over her neighborhood but "luckily" some guy had a horrific accident in his truck and when the police and fire fighters came to help him, they moved the lines out of the way so she could get to work. (Perhaps this should've been my first clue of the type of story telling to come.)
So Sunday we picked up our yard, and on Monday we picked up my parents' yard and then headed to the park. I returned to work today, and for us, it is pretty much business as usual here on the coast. But we are all thinking about the people further inland who were not so lucky.
