Re: Florence is a monster

Here, law enforcement asks people who chose to stay behind to write their names, SSNs or drivers license numbers in permanent marker a few places on their bodies to make it easier to identify their bodies.

No one will come at the height of the storm regardless of the calls coming in.

When the search teams enter homes after storms, they paint an X on the side of the homes they search. The first line of the X is made when the team goes in. The second part of the X is made when the team leaves. At the top of the X, they write the date. The bottom indicates the number of live (top) and dead people (bottom) found in the building. The left side is the team identification and the right is misc. information.

These painted codes were on every single home on the island after the last big hurricanes.

It's no surprise or accident that the bottom of our X always reads read "0" and "0". The news was not as good at this house:

Re: Florence is a monster

I hope there is any loss of life or too much damage.

Re: Florence is a monster

Allow me to empathise with all those who have family, relatives, and any other loved ones there in N.C. or in the general vicinity. My girl friend lives in Jacksonville. I`ve already advised her to try and make it up to Ohio, where she has her daughter, and stay, at least until things get back to normal back in the Carolinas, but, i`m not sure whether she is able to do that. So, it`s a bit of a worry about her. Maybe if she can stay at one of the Red Cross evacuation centres, she should be alright. I just hope so.

Re: Florence is a monster

Bardicus, I hope your girlfriend, and everybody else out there, can find safety. There is nothing worse than not knowing what is happening to loved ones, and I would think that means of communication will be badly affected. Good luck to all who are there

Re: Florence is a monster

Florence is now turning south. headed directly toward the Florida/Georgia border. The closer it gets to land , the harder it is going to be to evacuate.

Re: Florence is a monster

The hurricane has been downgraded to a category 2 storm, still very dangerous of course.

Re: Florence is a monster

The 1st bands of heavy rain are now hitting the coast. The 'eye-wall' of Florence is expected to hit in about 18 hours. (Friday morning 7 am London time).

Re: Florence is a monster

Are you near there Bakerman? if so I hope everyone is OK is surfermum near there.... hope you are ok SF and all from across the pond who post here stay safe

We moan about our weather here but at least we don't have the extremes..

Re: Florence is a monster

...Latest info....The storm centre is apparently just crossing the coast as we speak, close to Wilmington. It`s already been down graded to a Cat one, which is good news, but, of course, still capable of very damaging wind gusts, and life threatening storm surges before it runs out of steam completely..

Re: Florence is a monster

Summer, I am on the Gulf of Mexico, far away from the storm. I have several friends in NC but they all evacuated. Thank you for your concern. I have blue skies today!

There was contraflow on the major roads, so there was never significant evacuation problems. The only backups were people not involved in evacuations trying to go north from Florida and Georgia up the eastern seaboard.

As almost all hurricanes thankfully do, this storm weakened before impact. This is because of dryer air that pulls into the center circulation as the result of subsidence (sinking air trapping warmer air at the surface) and contact with land.

Most damage so far has been light: trees down, light aluminum roofs torn off, power out. Lots of rain coming, flooding will be a problem.

Always a good thing to evacuate though so utility companies can get the infrastructure repaired. Some coastal places still have surge (though not as much as forecasted) and flooding from extensive rain.