Here Comes Florence

My go-to meteorologist, Joe Bastardi, says Hurricane Florence is going to be Very Bad.  Like, Hurricanes Hugo or Hazel Bad.  And that, folks, is Bad.  Despite going through several hurricanes after my folks retired to NC, Mom still talked about how bad 1954's Hazel was in central WV to the end of her days.  And I'm familiar with Hugo because of my never-ending love affair with Charleston, SC.  They were still recovering when I first started going down there and reading Lunatic Wind convinced me to never, ever play with a hurricane.

Bastardi, who avoids hype and prefers just the facts, ma'm, does a good job of explaining how and why they've been expecting September to fire up and how Florence is pretty well doing exactly what they predicted days ago here  My sister, who lives east of Raleigh, is supposed to leave for a conference in Orlando Wednesday night.  I hope they still go - there's not a thing she will be able to do about her house and her dogs will be sheltered further inland.  The trouble with where she lives is not just that hurricanes don't always get knocked down below hurricane strength by the time they get there but that they spawn tornadoes across that flat, East Carolina land.

Here in the Eastern Panhandle we are looking at a whole bunch of inches, possibly FEET, of rain on top of days of  rain that hit us out of the west and has just sat.  Southern WV hasn't recovered from the flooding of a couple years ago.  And West Virginia is second only to CA in landslides.  Oh goody.

We won't have to worry as much, of course, about hurricane-force winds here.  But everybody is talking about what catagory Florence will make landfall as.  Finally saw an easy-reference wind-scale chart that I completely understand.