If you have the storm coming (eg Alabama and east)

@thefjordkeeper That was some storm last night wasn’t it? Spectacular thunder and lightening (I now need a nap). Glad you live on a hill and are dry! Are the lower lying areas around you flooded? Here the streams and rivers are over their banks in flood stage and the storm sewer system is/was overwhelmed by the runoff (what caused the problem in our parking lot).

I just came from my storage unit and it is dry although all the run off “ponds” and ditches around it are full/overflowing. So definitely not a 100 year flood since it the storage unit is about 50’ from the edge of that according to FEMA maps, but certainly enough.

I then made a “rubbernecking” detour over to the reservoir after checking on my stuff. Pretty spectacular where they opened the dam on the reservoir - zillions of seagulls packed in on top of a stone pile meant to block flooding of the parking lot (that was a fail, that is flooded over the signs). No place to pull over and take a photo or I would have.

@Kidsandliz yeah, I hate when that happens. (lost photo op). Came home last week to find an adult brown owl sitting in the middle of the road in front of my mailbox at 2330. Almost hit the damn thing, and it just fluttered up into the trees across the street. Since I back into my drive I lit it up with the headlights. Got my camera out and it flew BACK INTO THE ROAD… I did manage to get a quick shot with the DSLR but didn’t have time to get my better flash out so it was pretty dark. Owl flew back into the trees and then into the woods.
Unfortunately, it must have decided to get back in the road later since I found it hit by a car the next morning. Bummer.

@chienfou That is sad.

@Kidsandliz I was pretty bummed as well. The last time I hit an owl I was driving a fire truck to a call at night and I found it in the grill when we got back to the station…

@chienfou Guess they learned from what happened here. LOL The amount of rain here was very under predicted until we were in the middle of it. Well enjoy. Hopefully you are out of harm’s way.

@chienfou That sounds about right. We had nearly 3" in less than an hour after the relatively mild first wave went through.

@Kidsandliz well, that was a ‘wash out’ so to speak… only 1 inch and no real storm to speak of…

@chienfou Well that is good. Since they significantly under predicted here I guess they over predicted where you are. Of course now all the people who cancelled school feel stupid I am sure.

@Kidsandliz yeah,the last few cancellations have been for naught, but at least my wife got the day off out of it!

@chienfou Hopefully a paid day out of it that didn’t come out of her personal/sick/vacation days.

@Kidsandliz yep, if they call it off it’s on their dime. Plus since they are a private/church school they technically don’t have to make up the day…

@moondrake

Blockbuster

Yeah. About that…

@someRiverNoise We noted the irony at the time.

@moondrake funny how much of a difference there is about what constitutes “scary/dangerous/crazy” weather.

1. a 2 inch rain is not that unusual here especially over a 24 hour period.
2. on the other hand 2 inches of snow predicted will deplete every local store of water, loaf bread and peanut butter, and if it actually falls, will create a major traffic PITA until the afternoon, when it will all melt away! Hey people… just keep your ass at home!
3. as an aside, I had to re-read the location of the neighborhood a couple of times, then realized that “behind the dam” was downstream, not upstream
   which is what I immediately thought…
4. Blockbuster… hehehe…yes, ironic wasn’t it.
5. This is why hurricanes are scary… it’s not the wind, it’s the storm surge. You can build for wind, but it’s hard to stop a wall of water.

@chienfou Sorry, should have said “below” it. Our ubiquitous rock walls became problems for a lot of people. Those in lower areas without gates to let the water out filled up. My coworker got home and found her house dry, but her yard was 5’ deep and there was water halfway up the back windows. Her husband hammered a screwdriver through the cement in a few places to let the water drain slowly. Another coworker came home to waist deep water in her house. One family came home and found their German shepherd drowned in her own yard. Newer rock walls have pvc pipes at the base to drain water, but older homes do not.

@moondrake yeah. it only seems obvious after it’s too late!
This is why new construction on the beach in the gulf is on stilts. Water from hurricane storm surge can go around the pilings but doesn’t actually reach the building itself. If there are any walls on the ground level they are made to break out and let water flow through. The only problem is if your beach erodes back ‘behind’ (landward side) your house and leaves it out on stilts in the water!
In the old days of single story cinderblock homes you just took the door off the front and back of the house and let it run through it. Then hosed out the mud and dead fish afterwards…

@chienfou
When I was a kid we used to stay in one of those stilt houses every summer for a week or so. The “neighborhood of stilt houses” always survived the hurricanes.

@chienfou
Galveston. 1900.

Somewhere between 6000-20000 dead. 6000 confirmed. They never knew the full count. Worst natural disaster so far, in American history.

The storm surge went a few feet into the second floor of houses and buildings that had second floors. It was strong enough to carry or knock buildings - big ones - right off their foundations.

Basically no one who wasn’t on a second floor of a surviving building lived.

I think one of my grandmothers was there and survived as a pre-schooler. She had to survive, I think, cholera, right after that, as did many who lived thru the entire devastation. If it wasn’t her, it was some relative at that time. One of my brothers is meeting the other members of that branch of the family right now.

Now the entire center of the island is about 20-30 feet higher than it used to be. They brought in soil and jacked up the surviving buildings and built a seawall. During recent hurricanes, the storm surge did not get that near to the top of the seawall.

Before the hurricane, Galveston was a busier port that either Houston or Corpus Christi. Afterwards … a resort and beach town after it was rebuilt. Never again a busy port.

@f00l National Geographic has a series called Perfect Storms, and the Galveston one was the first episide, “America’s Deadly Disaster”. They were all very interesting, but the one I found most affecting was episode 3, “Fire Twister”. “Nearly 140,000 people die on Sept. 1, 1923, when a magnitude 7.9 earthquake ravages Japan and strong winds create an ensuing massive firestorm”. There were some unforgettable firsthand accounts from survivors in the documentary.

@moondrake
Someday look up the Years Without A Summer.

Due to volcanic exposions around Indonesia that threw so much dust into the air that the entire planet cooled off for a year. People died all over the world due to starvation for a year or two. There were two of them in the 1800’s.

Tambora, 1815, caused a “death year” in 1816.
Krakatoa, 1883.

Snow in June, freezing temperatures in July, a killer frost in August: “The most gloomy and extraordinary weather ever seen,” according to one Vermont farmer. (Tambora, the larger eruption)

@f00l one of my mom’s uncles helped design and build that seawall. And a bunch on the MS river.

@f00l I was familiar with the phenomenon surrounding Krakatoa, I became fascinated with it as a teen. I hadn’t heard of Tambora.

@Kidsandliz
Thanks to your relative then.

@PlacidPenguin Yeah the car death was around here. She called 911 and by the time they got there the car was completely submerged in the overflowed creek. Sad.