I live south of Washington, north of Richmond, and about 10 minutes off I-95, so the hurricane is making the front page of the local papers and such.
I don't come down to North Carolina very much at all...but it is cool to know a fellow clicker lives relatively close by (compared to Australia, England, or even Oregon). I wish I knew what that was, then I might be able to answer that.
As for pictures, I'll snap a few if anything interesting happens, but I remind you that NOTHING interesting happens in Virginia (save sniper shootings, the odd murder or two, and the occasional hurricane).
I was just up there last weekend, at kings dominion. Its about 20 miles north of richmond, im sure you go there alot. The OBX is short for the Outer Banks. Its only like 3 hour drive. Tons of people come to this dinky island, even though its so boring. I guess cause theres tons of stupid light houses and the place where planes were invented, and the lost colony. And of course.. the beach.
We are the music makers, we are the dreamers of dreams...
Hmm, lot of Viginians here? Wow. I live right in the path of it too = Central VA. Inland, but we are going to get some serious WEATHER folks. No power, flooding, heavy winds, etc. I am not going to wash away, but I wonder how well things will do with the winds. Everything is battoned down as best it can be, but those darn trees can do anything, given the right incentive. Looks like there may be a real mess in the making, all around.
Thing is, power will probably go out, and gosh knows how long, because trees are going to fall and powerlines with them. Get out the bottled water, have those buckets ready for flushing, crank up the wood stove, and use that camp stove or camp fire afterwards. Did I say, "Plenty of bottled water?" Well pumps don't work when you have no volts ... hehe.
There are hurricanes in England too... 1987, heh, we got the tail-end of one of America's little gems. We also get twisters, mostly up North. They're tiny though, and only ever go on fields and meadows, rarely housing areas. I think there's some geographical reason for that.
Dines, yes we do get most twisters up north but in fact you could call east anglia britains own tornado alley as we have around 30 a year in that area, oh and they arent 'tiny' - The the one I saw in albury (Berkhamstead) - near Hemel happened to be an F2 (112mph+) - which is pretty bad for an english twister..
oh and rycon, remember to watch out for those waterspouts!(they are water tornadoes which often spawn from hurricanes):
We have survived hurricane isabell, I will now tell you what happend.
I woke up thursday morning, 10:30 AM, wtf? Since the boards are on my window, it seems like night so I slept longer. I take a look out the crack of the board, to find the wind blowing pretty hard, and it raining like crazy. So I decided to take a shower, and as soon as I wash my hair, the power dims a few times.. that was scary. lol. So I decide to unplug my computer, and go eat. A few hours pass, the hurricane is intensing greatly but the power was still holding, so I decided to get on my comp. After about 30 mins, sombody called me and I look over at my computer as the power goes out... the whole island is now without power. We light candels, flashlights and such. Now what? To make this story short, I will skip the boring hours of sitting around listning to a radio of people calling in and telling the guy whats going on around his house. All of a sudden... a big loud boom goes right above me, a huge tree limb hit our roof and slid down and smashed into the nextdoor fence. Everybody was in a flurry running around trying to find what happened. So I decide to sleep a while, when I wake up the rain had stoped and me and my bro decided to check out our island. We walk out to find a tree had busted at the base and fell on our nebors car hood, several limbs smashed into the fence, several big round trees split in the middle, trash everywhere. We drive down the street, to find our stop sign missing. We look at the beach, the waves are insane huge and as completly undermined the dunes. Gas stations had metal twisted around the poles, big signs (Like McDonalds) were competley blasted, roofs off houses were missing, cars were in knee deep water, tons of power lines laying in the highway, we got pretty trashed.
We are very much alive, our house, like most others, is perfectly fine. Right now you cannot even go outside, the cops will stop anybody they see, since the highway is flooded (Note we only have one, 5 lane highway going down the whole island) Whole houses have fallen in the ocean, piers are completly smashed, this has been the worst hurricane yet. Anyway, I will have pictures soon, wanted to let everybody know we made it. Peace.
Edited by the Author.
We are the music makers, we are the dreamers of dreams...
My story can't match Rycon's but I'll try...
We knew that Virginia would be hit, though probably not as bad as the shoreline, so our preparations were minimal at our house. We bought some sandbags to block a basement door that likes to flood if it rains more than a few inches. That, plus some flashlights and a snack or two.
When the storm actually came, the rain was minimal, but the winds were something we hadn't seen in quite some time. We lost power pretty quickly, as the lines were down here and there.
The worst damage my household suffered was a redwood tree that my mom really like was cracked in two, as well as a blue spruce that got uprooted.
Since the power was gone, my brother and I decided to train ourselves some more. We collected our guns and timed ourselves in field-stripping techniques. You know, rip it apart, put it back together stuff.
I can strip my pistol apart and put it back together in less than 30 seconds. I took a bit longer with the Kalashnikov.
All in all, we're safe here in Virginia, I hope the others are, too.
keep the storm stories coming!
"Say you're hanging from a huge cliff at the top of mt. everest and a guy comes along and says he'll save you, and proceeds to throw religious pamphlets at you while simultaniously giving a sermon." - Dustin G