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Hurricane Helene

Hurricane Helene rolled through our area a week ago.

Our house got hit by a falling tree and we lost power for a week. I've started making notes on the cleanup and repairs @ /notes/house/helene1 & /wha/glenridge/#helene2. I'm writing this with a three and a half ton3 oak tree still learning on the roof because my office isn't under it, the tree contractors equipment is still on site, and we have power. Some of our neighbors don't have power and some are reporting that power could be out for weeks. It's one of the most deadly hurricanes to hit the US in the last half century.

We had planned to take a little getaway for our 20th anniversary last weekend up to a cabin on a lake in the mountains of western North Carolina so I had been watching the weather leading up to it fairly closely. Even up to a day before our departure date, we were still planning on traveling until our reservations were cancelled by the facility. We had already planned on taking Friday September 27th off to travel. I woke up very early around 5am because our power began to flicker and I could hear the wind and rain. I fixed a pot of coffee and we were downstairs huddled with our pets when we started to hear the fairly ominous sound of trees around us falling. We heard and felt the weight of the big oak hit our house and waiting in place until it seemed to die down a bit. When I went to check on the damage, I saw the curtains fluttering from the wind and the rain coming in from the ceiling so I closed the door went back downstairs to the other end of the house to finish my coffee. At that point, I knew it would be a long haul.

The storm started to clear out before daybreak and I could already see some neighbors out mulling around with flashlights assessing the damage. I got out to go check on the house and neighbors.

Considering the amount of loss elsewhere, we're lucky that there was no immediate danger to us or our neighbors. I started in on the clean up and got the driveway cleared of top of our popular tree. We live on a corner intersection and the roads were blocked in every direction as far as could be seen. There were over 30 trees down across the roads between us and the entrance to our neighborhood. Neighbors got to work with chainsaws and the roads were passable within hours.

We went without electricity for six days. Day four is about when it got tiring mostly due to the cold showers. Up until then, cooking on the camp stove, going to bed at 7, and spending a lot of time outdoors was kinda fun. My dad offered to loan his generator on day two but I knew as soon as I hauled it across the state the power would be back. We have a couple neighbors with generators where we stored some frozen goods and charged our phones. We got the power back on before we got the tree off the roof.

The fellas that hauled the tree off the roof were excellent. They brought in a giant chainsaw arm to trim it back and then used a crane and haul it off. They'll be back this week to haul off the two stumps and the rest of the tree debris. We had a bit of a debate midweek about experience vs. youth since the contractors were young and we also had a quote from our more experienced tree contractor. Hanging from a crane with a chainsaw is a bit nuts.

Now it's really just a matter of our contractors to make the rest of the repairs and settling with the insurance company. And since Monday has rolled around and things are headed back to normal, I've got a couple major takeaways. While chatting with one of the tree fellas, he told me that he had maxed out his Roth IRA this year and because of the additional work from the storm would need to consult with his financial advisor on how to deal with the overflow. The tree guys, public works, the power line guys, the contractors... I was reminded that this type of blue collar work not only pays, but that we all depend on these folks more than we might usually acknowledge.

The damage from the storm elsewhere was severe and, aside from the obvious that we're all at the mercy of mother nature, it reminded me to pay closer attention. There is a second major hurricane coming out of the gulf and it's also expected to rapidly gain strength in the coming days. I'm with the scientists on this... warmer air and ocean temperatures help exacerbate the storm strengths and rainfall. We've had eight landfall category 4 and 5 hurricanes in the last seven years whereas the previous eight storms occurred over 60 years4. I'm having an issue linking to the sources because the National Center for Enviromental Information in Asheville has an outage related to the storm5, but we're definitely heating up6.

We're very lucky. That tree could have easily come on through the roof and killed us in bed. Needless to say, I'll be bringing the crew back in to remove some other trees from around the house and I'll be buying lunch. It was encouraging to see the team work attitude around our community and I'll try my best to carry on with it.

 

Footnotes​

  1. /notes/house/helene ↩

  2. /wha/glenridge/#helene ↩

  3. Landowner's Guide to Determining Weight of Standing Hardwood Trees - University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture - https://www.uaex.uada.edu/publications/pdf/FSA-5021.pdf ↩

  4. Data in Action: The warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico helped ‘fuel’ Hurricane Helene - https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/DataAction-2024-10-03-The-warm-waters-in-the-Gulf-of-Mexico-helped-fuel-Hurricane-Helene ↩

  5. NCEI Asheville Hurricane Helene Outage - https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/node/6696 ↩

  6. 2023 was the world’s warmest year on record, by far - https://www.noaa.gov/news/2023-was-worlds-warmest-year-on-record-by-far ↩