As I write this, I have had power in my home (other than my backup solar power) for less than one hour. I am using my phone for Internet access, and that has only been possible for about the last 30 minutes.
If I had to sum up Florence in a word, it would be “long”. If I got 2 words, it would be “long and wet”. We got 30 inches (76 cm) of rain; about half of that in 12 hours, over the course of 3 days. The storm was relentless and the trees didn’t do well. Many power lines were taken down by trees. Roads and bridges were damaged by flooding. It was the worst hurricane I have ever experienced. I’m sure glad it weakened before it got close or things might have been a lot worse.
Most of what I’m dealing with is from temporary flooding in my yard. Two of my out-buildings got water in them, so many things need to be dried out. However, my house is a couple feet higher, so nothing critical got flooded. There was no damage to my house or its contents.
I have a pretty decent sized battery bank that is charged by solar panels. Generally, it gets me through these storms and the sun comes out after the storm and recharges the batteries, allowing me to keep my refrigerator, phone, radio, and some lights going indefinitely. However, in this storm, the storm clouds stayed around long enough that my batteries were virtually depleted before we got any decent sun to recharge them. I estimate, even though it has been sunny for about 2 days, it will take about 3 more sunny days to completely recharge my batteries.
I am grateful that things were not worse, but I’m here to tell you that Florence was a bad storm. I haven’t been out to the beaches to see what kind of storm surge damage was done, but I have heard it was bad.
I hope everyone knows that you don’t really need to worry too much about me, as I’m a pretty self sufficient individual and I’m a good swimmer. 🙂 On the other hand, I want to thank everyone for thinking of me. I appreciate your concerns. I sat down to write this blog entry as soon as I got access to the Internet. I hope everyone else is okay. A lot of people around here are just returning to their homes, some people still don’t have power, and we’re all still digging out. Don’t expect to hear much from me for a while.