Hurricane Florence - Evacuate All

Well, I just got the word that my home is in a zone that's being evacuated starting tomorrow at 8AM. I'm currently packing up, and I'll be heading inland with my kids and dogs to my mom's house outside Petersburg, so no real worries there. It's still in the path, but about 80 miles away from the coast so even if we lose power it's in an area that doesn't really flood easily. My wife won't be able to evacuate unless the whole area evacuates, so she's looking for places to stay and organizing her sailors that are in the same position.

Anyone else getting the hell out?

My daughter goes to school in Greenville NC at ECU. They are shutting down at noon tomorrow and she is coming up here at that time (I'm in northern VA, we're going to get some rain but that's probably it). Regardless of whether they were going to shut the school down or not, she was leaving Wednesday morning.

Glad she's coming tomorrow.

I live close to TBoon (we still need to get drinks!) and will prep for possible power loss, but not too worried.

I know Tyrian and Dragonfly are leaving sometime this morning. I think most people further inland in central NC are staying put. When Fran came through, I didn't have power for 7 days. Now I've got a stash of freeze-dried food, a gas grill, and a camp stove. On the way to work this morning, any station that had gas had cars lined up into the street.

That's my biggest concern now - did my daughter listen to her old man when he told her to gas up on Monday morning and limit driving until bug out time?

deftly wrote:

I know Tyrian and Dragonfly are leaving sometime this morning. I think most people further inland in central NC are staying put. When Fran came through, I didn't have power for 7 days. Now I've got a stash of freeze-dried food, a gas grill, and a camp stove. On the way to work this morning, any station that had gas had cars lined up into the street.

Don't forget to stock up some water; you can rinse out some milk jugs and fill those if it's too late to buy prefilled in the supermarket. (I think it's about 70 cents a gallon here, horribly expensive compared to the actual cost of water, but pretty cheap from a convenience perspective.) You'll want about a gallon per person per day.

You may also want to fill up a couple of bigger buckets if you have any handy, to use for toilet flushing. A tub could work, too, if you've got a plug that's good enough to hold water for several days. Your supply may well not go out, but water pressure is normally maintained by powered devices most places, so a really major power failure can see the water stop, too.

I've always got a few cases of bottled water around and fill up the tubs for non-potable water. I don't recall a time in any of the extended power outages here where water supplies were cut off (unless you're on well water), but good advice regardless. Even if the supply isn't cut off, there have been instances where power failures or flooding at sewage treatment plants caused contamination to water supplies.

We're well inland NC in the triangle, so we'll be away from the worst of it. That said, our house is older, in an older neighborhood with old trees, and above the ground power lines. My wife has spent the morning calling insurance companies checking on policies and getting all the important paperwork in a giant zip lock bag. We have enough family nearby that I'm sure we'll personally be just fine, but we also both remember Fran so we're trying to prepare for anything when it comes to fallen trees.

Looks like Florence will be moving south along the coast a bit.

https://www.facebook.com/mikesweathe...

What is that other larger storm out in the middle of the Altantic?
Looks like it might be closest to Iceland?

mudbunny wrote:

Looks like Florence will be moving south along the coast a bit.

https://www.facebook.com/mikesweathe...

If it indeed follows that track down the coast and then up into WNC, Asheville and the mountains will see severe flooding as well.

Oh, and since I don't think of these things until I get home and actually start doing them, pack your freezer. Empty your ice trays into a garbage bag or something, and keep making more ice and repeating until your freezer is packed with ice.

deftly wrote:

Oh, and since I don't think of these things until I get home and actually start doing them, pack your freezer. Empty your ice trays into a garbage bag or something, and keep making more ice and repeating until your freezer is packed with ice.

I read this in the voice of Sterling Archer.

Jonman wrote:
deftly wrote:

Oh, and since I don't think of these things until I get home and actually start doing them, pack your freezer. Empty your ice trays into a garbage bag or something, and keep making more ice and repeating until your freezer is packed with ice.

I read this in the voice of Sterling Archer.

I often think in the voice of Sterling Archer.

deftly wrote:
Jonman wrote:
deftly wrote:

Oh, and since I don't think of these things until I get home and actually start doing them, pack your freezer. Empty your ice trays into a garbage bag or something, and keep making more ice and repeating until your freezer is packed with ice.

I read this in the voice of Sterling Archer.

I often think in the voice of Sterling Archer.

No better place for a Pimms Cup than the eye of a storm.

/ Archer

Seriously though, what do you need a f*ckton of ice for after a storm?

Jonman wrote:
deftly wrote:
Jonman wrote:
deftly wrote:

Oh, and since I don't think of these things until I get home and actually start doing them, pack your freezer. Empty your ice trays into a garbage bag or something, and keep making more ice and repeating until your freezer is packed with ice.

I read this in the voice of Sterling Archer.

I often think in the voice of Sterling Archer.

No better place for a Pimms Cup than the eye of a storm.

/ Archer

Seriously though, what do you need a f*ckton of ice for after a storm?

For when you have no power for days and want to keep the things in your freezer frozen?

A source of clean drinking water.

fangblackbone wrote:

What is that other larger storm out in the middle of the Altantic?
Looks like it might be closest to Iceland?

Either a regular thunderstorm, or possibly Greenland, not exactly sure what you were looking at.

This morning's predictions are looking like Florence will turn due West once it hits land and then die out over South Carolina when it runs into the mountains. Wind and rainfall predictions for my area of VA have tempered quite a bit, but the Carolinas are going to get it bad.

Wembley wrote:
Jonman wrote:

Seriously though, what do you need a f*ckton of ice for after a storm?

For when you have no power for days and want to keep the things in your freezer frozen?

Duh. I'm such a numpty. That should have been obvious.

Mixolyde wrote:

but the Carolinas are going to get it bad.

Wilmington and surrounding areas are so completely screwed.

From the Onion.

FEMA Frantically Prepares Apology For Screwing Up Hurricane Florence Response

they were frantically writing the apologies they will issue for screwing up their response to Hurricane Florence. “This is going to be big, so we need all hands on deck to determine what is absolutely going to go wrong in our half-hearted attempts to alleviate the damage from this devastating natural disaster,” said administrator William Brock Long, explaining that FEMA’s current strategy included crafting the language of dozens of necessary apologies to be circulated over the course of the coming weeks and shoring up its supply of requests for civilian patience in the face of government inaction.
Jonman wrote:
Wembley wrote:
Jonman wrote:

Seriously though, what do you need a f*ckton of ice for after a storm?

For when you have no power for days and want to keep the things in your freezer frozen?

Duh. I'm such a numpty. That should have been obvious.

Heh, it's one of those preparation steps that I forget about until it's staring me in the face. I got home from work yesterday, got some ice, and noticed all the spaces fill with air that could instead be filled with something with a higher specific heat, and won't flow out every time I open the door.

deftly wrote:

I got home from work yesterday, got some ice, and noticed all the spaces fill with air that could instead be filled with something with a higher specific heat, and won't flow out every time I open the door.

There I was, about to make a lame joke about filling your freezer with lead blocks or something, until Google reminded me that the material with the highest heat capacity that isn't gaseous at freezer temperatures is.......

Water.

Except for lithium. That's half as much again. You should totally fill your freezer with lithium. You know, for safety.

Also, it'll be a convenient alarm system to inform you when your freezer has warmed sufficiently for the ice to start melting and drip onto the honking great big chunk of lithium in there was keeping your tater tots cold, but is just about make them very, very cooked.

It's kind of funny, I started the thread and I'm still chillin' at my house. Granted, the storm going south means we'll still get a bit of flooding (a light rain floods my street), but overall it likely won't be worse than the few thunderstorms we've gotten over the past couple days. We're pretty much outside the current model for getting hit, we'll just get side-swiped a bit.

The original plan was to go to my mom's house about 80 miles inland, but now the Navy is providing temporary lodging orders for those in mandatory evacuation zones (my wife will be able to file for reimbursement and we get a per diem), so we're looking at hotels just a little further inland so we don't have to outright leave the area. Money's tight, but Navy/Marine Corps relief is providing assistance with that as well, I'm about to head over and stand in line for some free money to keep us from coming too out-of-pocket for this all. It wouldn't be quite a pain except that we have two dogs, so lodging has to include them.

My thoughts are with you guys that are in the firing line.

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ColdForged wrote:
Mixolyde wrote:

but the Carolinas are going to get it bad.

Wilmington and surrounding areas are so completely screwed.

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I'm not sure who "National Hurricane Updates" really is, aside from possibly a secret Russian click-farming ring.

Are the numbers on that dick-graphic inches of rain?

No, projected wind speeds.