NJHurricane Posted August 23, 2011 Share Posted August 23, 2011 I have some family down your way who moved down in the past couple years who are interested in experiences of tropical systems that have impacted NC in the relatively recent past (last 25 years) ..Fran/Hugo/Floyd etc.... thanks in advance.... Jon in Jersey Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wake4est Posted August 23, 2011 Share Posted August 23, 2011 Fran was terrible. In Durham, we were without power for 12 days. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lookout Posted August 23, 2011 Share Posted August 23, 2011 Just an FYI, when the time comes we will have a Irene observations thread and it will be pinned. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gamecock Nation Posted August 23, 2011 Share Posted August 23, 2011 I was 9 yrs old for Hugo and it was crazy. We were in Columbia and there was still 100+ winds. We lived in a very old neighborhood with lots of really tall trees. They fell all over the place and we were without power for quite a while.....at least a week or so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marion_NC_WX Posted August 23, 2011 Share Posted August 23, 2011 For Western North Carolina, the three benchmark storms in the past 30 years were Hugo (1989 ), Opal (1995) and Frances (2004) Hugo's center made its closest approach over Hickory which is about 40 miles to my east so I was on the left side of the track. My local area is where that back edge really began to taper off...it rained 4-6 inches and we had winds 40-50 mph which caused some damage...but you didn't have to go any more than 20 miles east on I-40 to immediately get into hurricane force winds. We were that close from having big problems. Opal was another fast mover this time coming out of the Gulf...what I remember the most from her was exactly how fast things changed IMBY. Went from calm winds and high clouds to a whirling derbish in a matter of 4 hours. This time we were the opposite of Hugo, we were on the eastern extent of the worst damage...the results were the same, 4 inches of rain, 50 mph winds. Frances...she's a benchmark for her rainfall, 9.75 inches fell IMBY during a 24 hour period but the ridge tops just to my north and west had in places 20-plus inches of rain...the result was the worst flood and landslide event for the headwaters of the Catawba River Basin since the 1977 flood. Frances ranks as the third worst of all time, the worst goes back to nearly 100 years ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
juspeachy Posted August 24, 2011 Share Posted August 24, 2011 We lived in Jacksonville, NC from 1994 to 2000. Experienced lots of Hurricanes & Tropical Storms. My first land falling Hurricane was Bertha. We were in a 1000 sq ft house about 10 miles from the beach. There were 6 adults, 2 newborns, 2 cats & a Boxer all crammed in our home. So lucky the other couples were staying with us. One of the couple's mobile home was tipped over on its side & the other had a tree fall through the house and a limb pinned the baby bed to the ceiling. We were out of power for about 4 or 5 days BUT never lost our home phone service. After the storm was over, you could not open our front door or see the ground surrounding our house for all the fallen trees & limbs. The couple with the tree in their house ended up living with us until the repairs were complete. 6 weeks later we welcomed Hurricane Fran... After Hurricane Floyd, the houses at the end of our neighborhood were under 9 feet of water. We lived on a hill, so our house was fine. Snakes & fire ants were HORRIBLE for weeks after the water receded! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sea1skiff Posted August 24, 2011 Share Posted August 24, 2011 Rocky Mount during Floyd - 1999 Dennis had come thru 10 days prior and dumped 7 inches on us Floyd came thru and just crept slowly north east - We had like 14-17 inches in a 15 hour span. 25% of the City was under water, LP tanks floating down Hwy 301, refrigerators ended up tangled in trees. I had a friend who lived about 1/2 mile from the Tar River. he lived in a one story ranch. He woke up at 2am and stepped from the kitchen to the garage - three step drop - and the garage floor was covered in an inch of water. Within 45 minutes he and his family had to swim out the front door of the house. He stayed in a tree until 11am when his family was rescued by boat. The community has yet to fully recover. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moose4 Posted August 24, 2011 Share Posted August 24, 2011 I was living in SC in 1999 when Dennis and Floyd hit NC, but I remember the pictures. Greenville and many other areas along and east of I-95 were absolutely devastated by the rainfall. A few years before that, I actually drove through the backside of Fran, from Richmond to Greenville, SC, to meet my girlfriend (now wife). The remnants had just passed near Richmond when I left, and the main thing I remember was that there were trees across I-85 in southern Virginia, and no power pretty much between Petersburg and Greensboro. Also, no bathrooms, which was my more immediate concern. >.> On the way back I swung over toward Wilmington and saw some of the damage, lots of flooding, prefab buildings with roofs off, etc. Other than that, the only tropical weather I've actually seen was Camille in 1969 growing up in central Virginia (I was three, too young to remember it), Agnes in 1972, and TS Hanna here in Durham a couple years ago, which just caused minor flooding and not much else. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
calculus1 Posted August 24, 2011 Share Posted August 24, 2011 For Western North Carolina, the three benchmark storms in the past 30 years were Hugo (1989 ), Opal (1995) and Frances (2004) Hugo's center made its closest approach over Hickory which is about 40 miles to my east so I was on the left side of the track. My local area is where that back edge really began to taper off...it rained 4-6 inches and we had winds 40-50 mph which caused some damage...but you didn't have to go any more than 20 miles east on I-40 to immediately get into hurricane force winds. We were that close from having big problems. Yeah, I lived in Lenoir (about 30 or so miles NE of you) when Hugo went thru. I was eight years old. The eye passed right over MBY. We had strong winds ahead of the eye, complete calm for an hour or so, and then back to strong winds on the other side. It was quite wild. I can't fully remember, but I believe I was out of school for at least a week due to all the downed trees and resultant power failures. What a storm! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
polarity Posted August 25, 2011 Share Posted August 25, 2011 In 1989, when Hugo hit the SC coast, I was living in Hodges, SC. My home was surrounded by 6 pecan trees that I know are 50 years old at least. We lost one of the trees due to wind, like completely knocked over, roots and all. Debris was scattered all around Hwy 246 and Hwy 25, from shingles, vinyl siding, vinyl underpinning. When I worked later at International Paper, I was informed that at least 5 thousand square miles of pine timber was destroyed just in South Carolina by Hugo, and was told that is around the size of one of those small New England states. My husband, a residential builder then, was part of a clean up crew to head to Edisto, and he took many pictures of boats in trees, tree trunks hanging inside of house windows, roofless homes. If those pics weren't currently in storage, I'd sure enough scan them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WxKnurd Posted August 25, 2011 Share Posted August 25, 2011 I'll add my two pennies to this. I was 4 when Hugo hit and came barreling right through Catawba County. Only things I remember are 1) my mom running up the hill to my grandparents in the middle of the night while carrying me 2) my mom being mad that my dad decided to stay in the trailer we were living in at the time (he ended up sleeping through the worst of it) and 3) all the trees down around the area, one being a massive pine tree that fell through the middle of my uncle's double-wide. Other than that (and the rain and flooding that accompanied Frances) I've been at MB playing in a golf tourney while a TD was churning just off the coast and played football in the middle of TS Isabel when it came through Raleigh while I was a freshman at NCSU. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
schlontz Posted August 25, 2011 Share Posted August 25, 2011 Hugo rolled through Hickory just a few days before my fourth birthday. Being so young, I do not have very vivid memories but I do remember the large apple tree in our backyard falling. Probably the most memorable part was my dad taking me out for a short drive while the eye was overhead, and seeing all the downed trees and powerlines. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
burgertime Posted August 25, 2011 Share Posted August 25, 2011 I was six when Hugo hit. I remember my Aunt had come to visit so my brothers and I were stuck sleeping in the living room. We were in Kings Mountain so we missed the brunt of the storm, but I remember it sounding like an ocean outside and just being amazed. Once the power went out we just sat watching outside. I have a very vivid memory of someone trying to drive down the street going against the wind and rain at only about 5 miles an hour and we were sure whoever was in the car would just be picked up by the wind never to be seen again. In the morning there were a lot of trees down and then we were without power for a week. Of course as kids we thought this was the best night and week ever. As an adult I would be scared crapless. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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