02 September 2019

North Carolina postcards

Here in Saint-Aignan, we actually had a little bit of rain yesterday morning, and that's a good thing. What's going on in the Bahamas and will likely happen along the whole Atlantic coast of the southeastern U.S. is a very bad thing. I can't think about much else. It is hard to imagine wind speeds of 185 m.p.h. That's about 300 kilometers per hour, and those winds will be from the east, pushing water and waves on shore north of the eye of the hurricane as it hugs the coast.

This week I'll be giving you some digital postcards from coastal North Carolina. I took the photos exactly 17 years ago.
Do you think these rocks will protect this house from a storm surge?

The land along the 1,000 miles of coastline being threatened by Hurricane Dorian is very low-lying. For example, in Morehead City, the town in North Carolina where I come from, the highest point of land is 16 feet, or about 5 meters, above sea level. It wouldn't take much of a storm surge to submerge the whole place. They say the storm surge on Grand Bahama Island today will be about 20 feet high.

13 comments:


  1. Hurricane Dorian is a monster and it may wreck havoc on the US eastern seabord. Let's hooe it turns to the East and dies on the Atlantic ocean. Donnie XLV sugested to nuke hurricanes to destroy them before they reach the US. What a wonderful idea! Not surprising he came up with this solution since Donnie is a selfappointed genius. So, in addtion to being torrential, rains would be also radioactive! Great! MAGA

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    1. chm you're on a roll. I give this comment a glowing review.

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  2. Even if the water level isn't problematic, the winds will be. It's hard to understand the predictions re the direction of this storm, and why it will ride up the coast, rather than head inland. But leave that to the computers...

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    1. Hurricanes often track up the coast over the warm waters of the Gulf Stream. They start out moving west over the Atlantic, and then they turn north, and finally they turn northeast until they move over colder ocean waters and dissipate.

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  3. These nice houses look more French than American.

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  4. Chm -- perfect analysis of how nuking the hurricane would play out, not going into the other "unintended" consequences.

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  5. J'espère sincèrement que les vôtres n'auront pas à subir trop de dégâts.

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  6. 9 p.m. Eastern, and it's down to a Cat 4. But the incredible part is that it's stationary. Hurricanes aren't supposed to do that! Hoping it will expire before it gets to North Carolina.

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    1. Oh, hurricanes have stalled along the shoreline before. There was one that caused epic flooding in eastern N.C. a few years ago.

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