Last Florence Update

Sorry, folks. I survived.

Anyway, the storm, believe it or not, is not over! It was moving ridiculously slowly, and as I type this, we're still getting rain from it. The rain is expected to finally stop sometime Monday early afternoon/late morning. 

As most of you know, it was a bad time for both NC and SC. Not as bad as the Weather Channel reporter and Anderson Cooper tried to make it look - which confuses the crap out of me - but it was bad. We have mass flooding through the state, roads collapsing, a lot of damage, and several dead. 

My area fared a lot better than they had originally predicted. Originally, Florence was supposed to come on shore as a cat 4, move inland, and literally hover over my county for three days. They were telling us we were going to get 20+ inches of rain here. She came in a cat 1 and we got hit with the side of it, but the eye wall was far enough away that we were mostly spared. Winds did gust to 50 MPH here, but we've had worse. The rain, however, was impressive. By the time it stops raining we'll have about 8 to 9" down. We're actually getting hit with it as it turns. And we got about 5" in an 8 hour period one night.

Yes, my town had some downed trees and flooding, but by some miracle we actually never lost power, which was one of the things I assumed was going to happen. We are waiting, though, because we have a lake and a major creek that have not crested. All eyes are on that creek, though. Once it crests, it's going to flood a major highway, a large mall, and a heavy residential area. 

As predicted my yard flooded. There are trees down in my yard, way in the back, and some down in the neighborhood. Once the rain stops and I can walk in my yard, I'll assess how bad the flooding was by getting into my crawl space to see if any got in under the house. Right now my yard is grass soup and part lake, so I'm not getting back there just yet. 

This week and at least part of next I'll be assisting with cleanup in my area. That's always fun. 

Thanks for hanging in there while we learned to swim!