Thinking of all of you who are affected by this horrendous hurricane

Stay safe 

Thanks, we came through fine. A big mess of branches in the yard, but could’ve been way worse. Made good progress cleaning up yesterday.


Our power went off about 10 PM Wednesday and came back about 5 minutes later, then went off for good. I could see green, blue, pink flashes in sky. 95% of power is out in the county. I did read that the transmission lines are back on, so hopefully soon will be back.

The weather has been cool and breezy, which was nice. Plus we have the generator which helps run a few things and some lights.

My internet on phone has been very sporadic but seems to be up good this morning.

Very good news, I’m glad you made it through that well !

Glad you made it safely.

The power back this afternoon. 

Yeah stay safe guys, been following this myself, Floridians are certainly brave people, I’ve been watching footage of a possible waterspout moving over the Matlacha Bridge, and as the rotation starts, people are still driving over the bridge!! 😱

It's good you made it out safe bro. Sounds like you weren't, at all, in the more ominous portion of that hurricane. That's very good news, because
things could have been much, much worse. I've read that this hurricane did indeed reach category 5 status.

Yes we actually were on the outer fringes of it, but we still had wind gusts exceeding 60 MPH. If the storm had shifted further, it would have been worse. We also didn’t see as much rain as areas at the north side of the eye wall.

Interestingly we started getting rain around noon on Wednesday but it completely stopped raining or blowing for a few hours after about 2PM. It started to get pretty bad though around 8 PM when the eye made landfall.

Yo... just 60mph?? That main portion of the storm brought up to 180mph sustained winds, from what I've read. Dude... you really lucked out!
What happens during these kind of situations? I would think that they would start warning people to evacuate the area while there's still time.
Evacuating sounds extremely complicating, especially if there is limited time to do so.

Well it made landfall as a category 3 with 120 mph winds. I think I read 60 was the max here but I could be wrong, I’ll have to try to find what it was here.

As far as evacuations, anyone out on the barrier islands was given mandatory evacuation orders. It’s mostly along the coasts where you see evacuation orders due to the storm surge. Then inland it’s typically low lying areas due to possible flooding and also mobile homes.

They have most of those evacuation orders out a day or two in advance. They opened the shoulder emergency lanes on the interstates as well.

My family, friends, and I are all safe after Helene a few weeks ago. We got it bad in the upstate South Carolina and sadly, it was catastrophic about 50 miles to the NW in the North Carolina mountains. The worst natural disaster by far I’ve ever witnessed in person.

Helene made landfall as a high end Category 3 storm in the panhandle of Florida. It moved quickly north and brought category 1 hurricane conditions to my hometown in South Carolina. The eye of the storm and the strongest winds in the eye wall literally moved right over me  I’m still haunted by the loud rush of the nonstop wind and sideways rain, 200 miles away from the coast. It caught millions of people in upstate SC and the mountains of NC completely off guard.

No major damage to my house thankfully! Tons of branches and leaves down in my yard. My town and so many other communities in upstate SC were a literal disaster area. 1000’s of large trees down in my county alone. I was without power for 4 days, while others didn’t have it restored for about a week. We had gas shortages and compromised grocery stores. Really a scary and uncertain situation for a few days. Please keep everyone in the NC mountains in your thoughts and prayers. It was one of the worst natural disasters in South Carolina/North Carolina history. It’s going to take months for NC to recover and some roads and landscapes have sustained permanent damage.

@Cole D. Glad you're safe. Any downed lights which you got?