First, hope everyone has survived this monster storm with no damage. I know some of you were right in its track.

It has been a day here in Southside Virginia. 17 separate tornado warnings starting around 1115 on till almost 1900. I was in direct path of four of them but by grace none of them touched down. My weather radio was blasting almost constantly.

Two did hit ground west of here with considerable property damage but no injuries.

Please, let us know you're safe.

 

Hope everyone is safe.

 

Northeast Florida was spared thankfully.
I wasn’t worried about water…only the wind.
i had waking nightmares of my trees falling onto my garage…but we survived unscathed.

i hope everyone did the same.

 

Have you seen the videos of Tennessee and North Carolina. Whole houses floating down flooded rivers, highways washed away, crazy

 

The Smoky Mountain region got almost a year's worth of rain in four days.

The last time I can remember a hurricane causing that kind of damage that far inland was Camille in August 1969. That one nearly wiped Nelson and Amherst Counties in Virginia off the face of Earth.

NWS meteorologist friends have described Camille to me as an aberration as far as big storms go, because of the track it took and the way it regained strength over the Virginia mountains. One of them had just started his NWS career at Woodrum Field office in Roanoke after finishing meteorology school in June 1969. He retired shortly after the June 2012 derecho storm, starting and ending his career with catastrophic weather events.

Again, I hope all of you got thru it unharmed. Nature has its way and unfortunately there's little we can do to stop or control it.

 

My brother is in Brevard, NC, and we have friends in Georgia and Tennessee. A lot of them are without power, water, phone service. Most of them credit neighbors and community for pulling together, sharing resources and working through until the water recedes. It's been bad in Ashville and Hendersonville NC, and around Lake Lure. I guess when it rains in the mountains, it floods the valleys.

 

Sounds a lot like Rita in SW Louisiana. Entire communities were washed away. But no one knew because the media focused on Katrina and New Orleans and ignored the rest of the state.

 

There are a lot of people who others would call poor white trash along the gulf coast that will hate the federal government for generations because of that storm.

 

Media focuses on whatever will get them the most hits and highest ratings. I don't think many of them have any empathy for people who've lost everything, long as they can get a sound bite out of it.

We can only hope FEMA learned from their debacles in Katrina and Maria.

I'm normally pretty stoic, but when I saw video of Helene's destruction in Western NC, I cried. Folks there never expected anything like this. Southwest Virginia got hit hard too, but the media outside of Virginia isn't saying much about that.

If you can afford it and have it in your heart, support the disaster relief crews who are headed out to help.

 

So sad. I hope the people who visit this site are spared! I also hope anyone going through this storm gets proper relief from agencies in charge . Prayers sent 🙏 for all.

 

My sister used to live in Brevard, but moved to Flat Rock a few years ago (not that far east). They had similar outages and had to stay with friends until power came back on a few days ago. Water is running, but pressure is low and a boil advisory is in effect. Thankfully they aren't going to see much action from Milton.