Hurricane Florence

     We decided not to evacuate ahead of hurricane Florence. We were partially packed and ready to go if necessary, Since joining a million person cavalcade departing the coastal areas on roads that can't even handle a rush hour would be a major hassle in its own right, we wanted to be sure that it was necessary. It is true that the SCDOT made all lanes of I-26 into westbound lanes, but that only helped part of the problem. We would be taking 78 to Augusta.
     The three scourges of a hurricane are the winds, the rainfall and, for coastal areas, the storm surge. We had to consider all three. In reverse order, the storm surge is the most predictable. The storm surge is a large wave that is pushed by the wind ahead of the storm as it travels over the ocean. When it comes ashore its height is added to the state of the tide at that time. This combined height can be calculated fairly precisely as can the geography of the creeks, tributaries, rivers and bays along the coast. Our portion of Hanahan is far enough inland that prior storm surges had not reached us, and the predictions for this time were equally reassuring. Similarly, we have had major (>10 inches) rain events in each of the last three years without any local flooding.
     The remaining wild card was the wind. Even if we stayed dry, I did not want to stay around for any roof-ripping gusts. The track predictions said it would come ashore near Wilmington, NC. It did, and it missed the geographic prediction of five days and 1500 miles before by two miles! By then it was a Cat 1 hurricane, soon to be a tropical storm. It turned southwest and then west passing 50 miles north of Charleston. Since the southwest quadrant of such a storm is the least threatening, we would have a comfortable margin.
     I must say that Durelle, Cindy and I spent a couple of days looking at the possible scenarios and decided that, as long as it looked like the wind here would be manageable, we should be fine sitting tight. 
     The center of the storm is now a hundred  miles onshore and heading up and around Virginia, so it appears we made the right decision. May we always be so lucky.