Hurricane Art[hur]

Hurricane Arthur appears to be your basic East Coast Hurricane. They normally brush the North Carolina coast, ruining everyone’s July 4th plans on the Outer Banks.

They usually then weaken and head out to sea or hit Long Island or New England where the issue is storm surge to the South shore of Long Island and significant inland flooding.

They almost never turn inland and hit interior NC, so usually are not a threat other than flooding. The “big” Catawba River is dammed its entire length – it has 1% the water flow of the Ohio River. The river runs far to the West and South of Charlotte. If you have a floating boat dock on Lake Norman, it could go up or down a few feet. That’s about the biggest threat.

The big exception was Hurricane Hugo in 1989 (I was living in Michigan). It absolutely clobbered Charlotte. Trees that survived for 100 years fell over in seconds. Power was out for weeks. Lessons were learned about not ignoring hurricanes and being prepared to recover from the damage.

But that was 25 years ago – a generation has passed and most of the people living here now don’t remember Hugo.

More than likely, nothing will happen. The server is on a battery backup to give me a chance to do an orderly shutdown. If the power goes down for more than a few minutes, things will be offline – there is no backup facility. I should probably do a test of my battery backup, but I’m not overly worried – other than it being named Art

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4 Responses to Hurricane Art[hur]

  1. Art Stone says:

    When lightning and thunder arrive together, you’re too close

  2. Nidster says:

    Also, when the storm surge is pushing your house towards the creek, you’re too close.

    Anyways, odds are you’ll be OK being that Hugo hit 25 yrs ago. Now if a ‘Hugo’ ht every 6-10 years then maybe a person should start to worry, and at least stock up on a loaf of bread and some Cheeze Whiz.

    • Art Stone says:

      Well, we did get one pretty intense lightning storm (the one I was caught in after the movie. It was the outermost band from the hurricane. It flooded one or two underpasses that always flood when it rains.

      Radio is pure drek – at the height of the danger, WBT had a guest host who normally is on the Sports Talk station. He was complaining that the battery in his car door dongle went dead and he doesn’t remember how to unlock his door using a key.

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