I grew up in Tornado Alley, so I'm fairly well-versed in tornado safety protocol, but it wasn't until I moved to North Carolina that I learned a bit about hurricane season. We're about 3 hours from the coast. Three hours isn't super close but is close enough that we are affected by hurricanes. This year, hurricane season has been a bit more hyped and a bit more aggressive than in previous years.
Back in September, Hurricane Florence was headed directly for the North Carolina coast. We knew about it a week and a half before it was set to make landfall (note: this is a big difference between hurricanes and tornadoes! With hurricanes, you get warning! Like, more than mere minutes!). It was in the news constantly. Friends and family near and far checked in regularly. People were evacuating right and left, as the projected path of the storm was headed right toward the Triangle (Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill). Meteorologists were predicting that our area would have massive numbers of downed trees and power outages. The governor issued mandatory evacuations for the coastal areas. School, churches, institutions were canceling classes, services, and programming. The grocery stores were cleaned out, as were gas stations (I sat in line at a pump for almost 20 minutes). It was insane how palpable the panic was.
Brad and I- after much consideration- opted to stay in Durham. We made all sorts of plans and preparations and were as ready as we could be. Because everything was canceled, the girls were all home full-time and going a bit stir-crazy. But we were ready!
And then almost NOTHING happened.
The storm turned and curved south, and when I say "almost NOTHING happened," I mean that we barely even got any rain. It was a little surreal how much didn't happen. So weird. But please look at this picture I snapped really quickly when I ducked into a crazy-pants crowded Target to pick up bananas and diapers as part of our prep:
And this was a fairly well-stocked aisle.
This was literally the very last bunch of bananas left in the store. They were almost neon green.
After 10 days of stress and chaos and prepping and evacuating, everything was all set to return to normal...until Monday morning. Out of almost nowhere (as they do), tornadoes came through. We rarely get tornadoes here, and y'all, the sirens in our part of town do not work. Of all the people to mess with regarding tornado sirens- why me, Durham? Thankfully, Brad and Claire had not yet left for school drop off. Claire's school was able to cancel before the school day started (all our girls spent time in the coat closet). The public school system, though, had already started running buses and were unable to cancel school...so everyone in the public schools spent several hours in the hallways. I felt really awful for the kids and teachers and all the parents who couldn't get to their children. I would have been losing my mind. The School Board caught a lot of flack for not canceling, but (somewhat) in their defense, they'd already canceled two days of school when we ended up having no weather, only to have tornadoes (and associated flooding) come out of nowhere. What were they supposed to do?
Speaking of flooding, we had several friends who had pretty significant flooding around their houses (rain + creeks rising), causing varying levels of damage that took quite a bit of time to sort out. Thankfully, our home is situated fairly high(ish) and on an incline, so we were spared the flooding, although nearby surrounding areas were covered in water for several hours.
A few hours after the weather subsided on our tornado morning, the girls were begging to go outside, since they'd been cooped up for days.
They were excited at first but came back in pretty quickly because the humidity was so thick and oppressive. Poor girls.
We built a lot of forts while we were waiting for Florence, and the biggies decided Brynna needed one, too. Thankfully, Brynnie is a good sport.
Nearly a month later, Hurricane Michael came through. We had no hype about it. No chaos. Just rain in the forecast.
Um, guys. SO MUCH RAIN. And wind. But the rain! It rained so much and made the ground so soft that tons of trees fell, knocking out power all over the place. We, mercifully, did not lose power, although it flickered quite a bit, and I was very concerned about a tree behind our house that was swaying more than I was comfortable with. I checked in with lots of friends, and most of them had lost power. It took one set of friends longer than 24 hours to get it back. The day after the intense rain was beautiful and sunny. Claire had a dental appointment, and as we were driving there, I was shocked at just how many traffic lights were out. After her appointment, we stopped by Target to pick up some groceries, and EVERYTHING from the refrigerated sections were gone. They'd lost power for longer than 12 hours and had to throw it all out.
Michael, that had garnered zero hype or fuss, ended up causing much more trouble for us than Florence, which caused very little trouble but so much panic. It was all a very good reminder that a) weather is unbelievably powerful and b) we cannot control it.
And now we're thankful for some cooler temperatures!
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