Things sure can change in 24 hours. We all learned that lesson this week. Last Friday at our weekly staff meeting, our big topic of discussion was hurricane preparation. Dorian had gone from a tropical system that would dissipate to a strong hurricane and suddenly the forecast models all had the track cutting right across the state. We discussed the steps we would take to get ready for a hurricane: what things needed to be secured, taken down, and packed away. On Friday morning, every weather forecast said that we would be experiencing at the very least tropical storm force winds sometime in the next 5 days. I’m sure many of you remember Frances and Jean in 2004. Both of those storms weren’t particularly strong hurricanes, and they came from the east coast across the state. They both did plenty of damage to trees and homes and caused many power outages throughout the area.
With those storms in mind, we started making our plans. And then a little later in the day, the forecast models started suggesting a pull to the east. It wasn’t confirmed yet, just a suggestion that they might move that way. By Saturday morning, the consensus was that Dorian wasn’t coming across the state. Quite a change in 24 hours. But I know that I breathed at least a tentative sigh of relief and was glad that although we’d made plans to get ready for a hurricane, we hadn’t put many into action just yet.
Even as I write this newsletter, Dorian is still just off the coast of Florida. It’s scary to look at the satellite and radar and see this beast of a storm just hovering there. And while we are able to relax a little in our area, it is heart-wrenching to see the damage that occurred in the Bahamas. One of my staff members pointed out to me this morning that the sustained winds of Dorian when it hit the Bahamas were equivalent to an EF4 tornado. Just devastating. And now as Dorian moves slowly northward, I know that the folks in North and South Carolina are dealing with the same anxiety. Where will it go and what can be done to prepare?
For us, we went from preparing to hunker down inside to painting a fence in our yard. We had no idea that we would even be able to do that. We definitely dodged a big one this time. What a difference 24 hours makes.
