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No Blog Yesterday
Folks,
For general info, I did not get a blog out yesterday.
Gary
Hurricane Irene
Message from Keith Pladson (66): Roanoke Rapids, NC
Gary and all,
Since you brought up Irene in your 1272 issue, let me post a little account of what happened here. For those who have been through an event like this you will quickly identify with what I am saying, so sorry for the redundancy. For you others, I’ll try to give you a feel for what it was like. I’ve lived on the east coast now for about 45 years and have experienced several tropical systems – some big, some small and some where the Washington DC area was close to the eye of the storm as it passed through the area. We now live in Roanoke Rapids, NC, which is about 80 miles due west of the coast and just a couple miles south of the VA/NC border (just off of Interstate 95). The eye of the storm came ashore about 7am this morning over Point Lookout, NC, which is southeast of us by approximately 150 miles or so. However, this is a very large system so we started getting hit by the outer bands of rain and wind about 1 am last night. By the time I got up this morning (around 8 am – I know, I slept in. Hey I’m retired!!) we were already getting pounded by steady winds of about 25 to 30 mph and gusts of 50 mph or more and very heavy rain which was often hitting us horizontally rather that vertically. It is now 2 pm and there has been little change except that the wind is now blowing at around 40 mph and gusts are at times now exceeding 60 – 70 mph.. We have some huge oak trees in our back yard (by “huge” I mean trees that are up to 24 inches or more in diameter at the base and over 70 feet in height) and watching them when a strong gust comes through you see the upper parts of the trees sway 10 to 15 feet. In my mind I keep wondering how much of this they can take, but then oaks are pretty strong wood so it is unlikely they will break off. (When trees like these do go down it is usually because the whole root system has become weakened from the rain and they are then literally pulled out of the ground by the wind. I’ve seen a lot of trees downed like that in past storms). In any case we’ve so far been lucky as no trees have come down. At this time the eye of the storm is still a bit to our ESE and we’ve seen no let up. The eye will not come over us but pass east of us right at the coast line or about 80 miles from us. One of the things that make these weather systems so different from normal systems is that in most cases with weather fronts (which can have winds just as strong and lots of rain) they hit you and an hour or so later there all gone. We’ve been in this now for over 14 hours and since the eye of the storm is still to our ESE it means we still have many hours to go. Oops! I spoke too soon. One of those huge oak trees just came down. I have a shed in the back yard for all of my lawn equipment, etc. That huge oak tree is now laying over the top of the shed! It may break the shed in half if the wind doesn’t let up soon. As it is, it pushed the shed off it’s foundation and the shed now looks like an old sway backed mule. Fortunately, we have insurance so except for the deductible I’m sure it will be covered. Just hope no more trees come down. One of them (in our neighbor’s yard) could hit our house if it comes down. We also have a crepe myrtle (crepe myrtles are very common ornamental flowering shrubs/trees in this area) in front of our front door that has already lost about 60 percent of it’s foliage. And we have leaves and small branches all over our driveway and front and back yard. I would guess we have already received over 5 inches of rain and there has been no let up. I’ll try to Continued. In all of the tropical storms Alice and I have been through in the past, we have never felt the brunt of a storm as much as we did this one. I started writing this on Saturday the 27th, while we still had power and kept saving as I went for fear the power would go out and I would loose what I had written. This was about the time the storm was nearing it’s worst here. In any case, the first three paragraphs were written then. The remainder I’m writing now (Tuesday, Aug 30th).
So, now that we have power restored I’ll continue. We lost power around 3 PM on Saturday right about the height of the storm and got it back around 9:30 last night. (Fortunately, we have a small generator so could keep power to the refrigerators and freezers.) The tree that had come down across our garden shed continued its crushing downward movement toward the ground with each new gust of wind; eventually slicing our shed in half and crushing my riding lawn mower in the process. Unfortunately, as we were to discover, this was just the start of things to come. With nothing else to do we sat looking out the bigwindow we have on the back side of the house that overlooks the lake and watched in a mixture of fascination and horror as huge tree after huge tree gave up its hold to the ground and came crashing down. Over the course of about 3 hours as gusts here were most likely exceeding 80 mph we saw a total of 10 big oaks go down. The back of our house faces in a northeasterly direction and one of the things I have really enjoyed since moving in was that I could sit outside in the early morning sun and be completely comfortable because those big oaks gave me total shade. Unfortunately that’s all gone now as we have only three big trees left and even they have been denuded of most of their leaves. Some of the trees that went down were to the right side of our house and though we couldn’t actually see them from inside our house, we knew they were going down as each made a low guttural whup as it hit the ground. Two of those were close enough to the house that they could have hit the house, so we were actually glad each time we heard a whup that it wasn’t instead a crashing sound of hitting the house.
Finally, at about 7 PM on Saturday would could feel the wind was letting up and the gusts were not as strong. They were still very powerful, but the remaining trees were able to withstand each succeeding gust. The rain was also getting lighter. In all we got almost 8 inches of rain. Around 10 PM the wind had died down considerably and we went to bed. I woke up a little after midnight and when I looked outside the stars were shining and there was only a light breeze. It was over!!! Sunday morning everyone in the neighbor was able to start assessing damage. We clearly had lost the most trees. However, we were very lucky in that we were not hurt and neither was our house. Some were not so fortunate. Several houses had had huge trees come down on them with various amounts of damage. Later on Sunday, Alice and I took a drive around other neighborhoods in Roanoke Rapids and it was disheartening to see all the trees down across streets over power lines and on top of houses — literally hundreds of trees. Some of these trees were up to four feet in diameter and have probably been there for over 150 years.. And, Roanoke Rapids was not alone. The entire eastern third of the state suffered similar damage. And as you probably all know by now the entire eastern seaboard suffered similar and worse conditions, especially from flooding – which we did not experience in any way.
Keith Pladson (66)
P.S. I’ll try to send a couple of photos to Gary via my cell phone.
 Storms – History
From Gary Metcalfe (57): Forsyth, MO
 It sounds like the Minot floods are a real heart break for a lot of people. Our first encounter with too much water was 40 years ago when a dam in the Black Hills broke and sent 240 people to their maker. We were on vacation in the vicinity and had to get shots. Previous to that, we lost the two Arends brothers as we had 10 or 12 inches of rain during the night.
On our first visit to Galveston Island, Texas, history has it that over a hundred years ago a hurricane came in the middle of the night and killed 6,000 or more people. A man saw his family sucked down through the stairwell to never see them again. They hauled the bodies out to sea on rafts but that did not work as they surfaced again on shore. The stench was awful so they burned the corpses. They built up the seawall with giant boulders hauled for miles by rail. I watched Galveston Island go completely under water when I was on standby to haul the people to San Antonio for food and shelter. Then Katrina.
We observe people who evidently had not had a lot of adversity in their life, ignore the horrendous suffering of beautiful people in one of our most interesting cities in the U.S. The courage and valor of these people held them until the love and compassion from people like Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Harry Connick and other people that we know as servants. But, I think the Saints came through with a rush of adrenalin that even the hardest hearts got a lesson on the art of living.
For Minot I hope that even half the love that New Orleans has received will find you in your grief.
Don Conroy, how far is your house from the one we lived in our college days? I will never forget what that dr. told you on a day when you came home and reported to me!! lol Gary Metcalfe
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