Dorian

     Well, Dorian has left the building. It will end up bothering Cape Cod and eventually the Canadian Maritimes, and, along the way, providing a Schoodic Moment for all our camping friends in Belfast. In spite of the governor's order, we elected to sit out the storm here in Hanahan, SC. I'll explain our rationale in a moment, but first here's a pleasant sunset picture from our back yard as Dorian departed.

     If you look closely you can see that our neighbor's willow tree was partly uprooted as it shed a few leaves into our backyard. 
     Dorian is a storm name that I'm sure will soon be retired even though it will always remind me that Donald Trump doesn't really know where Alabama is. When Dorian emerged out of the southern Atlantic to hammer the Bahamas, it had sustained winds of 185 mph, gusts up to 220, and a central pressure of 920 mb! That got our attention. Cindy has been assigned to the Post and Courier's "Away Team". That means that she and a co-worker could be relocated to Aiken, SC to put out a post-storm paper using the facilities of a sister paper. So she made reservations for the three of us at an Econo-Lodge in Aiken. 
     From the beginning the storm's computer models projected that it would make a right turn before it got to Florida, closely skirt the South Carolina coast and make landfall, if at all, on the outer banks of North Carolina. Much to the dismay of the Bahamas, it slowed dramatically and even stopped for a while. As it churned up the ocean beneath it, it brought cooler water to the surface which began to sap the strength of the storm. Nonetheless, it was still a Category 4 and had to be taken seriously. Governor McMaster reluctantly decided that he had no choice but to order the evacuation of 830,000 people from the Charleston area. It, of course, would be a logistical nightmare even if done early. Starting Tuesday morning all I-26 lanes were westbound from Charleston to Columbia, a distance of some 120 miles. The local TV weather forecasters, while watching the uncertainties, would properly take the conservative approach. When combined with the public service announcements, we were inundated with advice to, "Get outa Dodge!"
     I like to think that we made a well-reasoned decision to stay. We knew that we were high enough and far enough inland that we didn't have to fear the flooding and storm surge that Charleston proper would see. It would be the winds that would force us out if they became strong enough to threaten residential structures in our area. So, we watched the storm's intensity and the proximity of the projected tracks to the SC coastline. We could handle power outages. We filled the bathtubs so as to have water for flushing and I put a new wick in my kerosene lantern. The winds started to pick up before dawn on Thursday. By afternoon there were a quarter of a million people without power. Ours held on with occasional flickers. The buried power lines in the development helped. At noon there was a gust at the airport of 69mph. That's about five miles away. Then the storm slowly departed leaving everyone with the mixed emotions of, "We dodged another bullet."