Hurricane Earl

September 3, 2010

Dear Hank,

My wife was upset the minute they named this hurricane Earl. She knew it was coming for us and as she said, “Who wants to be wiped out by a hurricane named Earl?” I mean let’s at least have some exotic feminine name or romantic Spanish sounding male name, but Earl?

Okay, it just missed us and we dodged a big bullet, but I was glad we got out of town. The experts all said it was going to turn and it did. They just didn’t know when or where exactly that it was going to do that, and therein lies the problem. What if it had moved over a little bit more and we had stayed? Oh, sorry house under water. No, no, no, as Don Juan said to Carlos Castaneda, “If a big man with a rifle wanted to shoot me I would not come around.” Earl was a cannon aimed right at us.

On Hatteras Island there is one highway that most all the traffic gets onto the island. Yes, there are ferries but they don’t bring that much to the island. In fact the ferry station is at the south end of the island and most of the traffic is going to Ocracoke Island. The last inhabited island in this section of barrier islands until you get further south. The highway is North Carolina road #12, NC12. It joins the island via a bridge at Oregon Inlet. Just after you get on the island there is a section of road that has big puddles along the ocean side of the highway. The only thing that separates the highway from the ocean is several hundred feet of sand much of which is piled up into high dunes. There is this one low spot along that stretch that gets water almost all the time: big rain or high tide; the puddle expands.

We knew we were in trouble when The Weather Channel sent Jim Cantori to the island. They send Jim to the area that they think is going to get the worst weather. When Jim shows up you know you are in trouble. Jim was dispatched to Hatteras. If the fact that Earl was a huge hurricane with at times 199 mile per hour winds and the lowest pressure reading I’ve ever heard a hurricane having (830 millibars) then The Weather Channel sending Cantori to within a few miles of where we live on Hatteras Island sealed the deal. We were going.

And what did the Weather Channel report first? That NC12 was under water at Oregon Inlet. Well, that’s like saying, “It’s Saturday and the sun is shining.” And what else do they show? A policeman directing traffic. Did they mention he’s one of the ferry workers who’s motioning people to get off the ferry like he does every day? No, of course not.

At five in the morning when the hurricane was passing off shore Jim was out in the ferry parking lot kicking water. He said there was sound side flooding, which there no doubt was, but the water in the ferry parking lot looked like the typical water that could pool there after a big rain. You gotta love it.

A neighbor called and told us the yards flooded but not too badly; up to the steps at one low lying house. Typical, for a big rain with winds pushing up through the Pamlico Sound that we face.

Gotta go,

Bryce