Helene, Part 1: Hurricane Coming

            Hurricane Helene made landfall at 11:10 pm, Thursday, September 26, at Keaton Beach, Florida – 285 miles away from where I live on Tybee Island, GA.  Destruction at landfall, on its path through Georgia and South Carolina and particularly into North Carolina was devastating.  It came closer than predicted to Tybee, with higher-than-forecast winds, but only struck a glancing blow here.  But here is where I was, and this is my experience.

Wednesday morning @ the dog park

The air on Tybee felt, as Jim used to say, balmy.  I don’t know the official definition of “balmy.”  He would say it when the sky was bright overcast, the breeze was warm and the humidity was high.  When you would need a headband, cap or visor to keep the sweat from pouring down your face.  People who don’t like that feeling would call it clammy. 

“It’s not the heat; it’s the humidity,” they would say. 

One of the things Jim and I had in common was our preference for humidity over dry heat.  We would call it tropical.  Which I suppose was apropos 36 hours before Hurricane Helene sideswiped us.

The other thing that happens on balmy days, especially around sunrise and sunset, is the gnat attack.  On one of the benches at the dog park we 7 am regulars line up our weaponry.  It runs the whole gamut from homemade herbal non-remedies, through various skin- and hair-care products being used off-label, to full-fledged, maximum strength aerosolized insecticide. 

Jim and I both grew up (not together) in the northeast.  At one point during my initial sojourn through a series of southern states in my late teens and early twenties, my best friend listened to me describe a tornado warning.  I told her how without a basement, co-workers advised me to hide in the bathtub under my mattress.  But, they said, I didn’t have to worry until I heard the “roar.” And then, super-hero style, I would magically transport my full-sized mattress into the smallest room of the house and maneuver it over my head in the bathtub.  I never tried, although in Oklahoma I did once sit between the toilet and tub hugging my weather radio until the all-clear was given.

“So,” my New York friend said, “when people there talk about the weather, it’s not just small talk.” 

Another transplanted Yankee I know once marveled at what he called “the relentlessness of nature” in the southeast.   It applied in equal measure to the rodent-sized cockroaches we euphemistically call “palmetto bugs” that are present year-round, slithering animals without feet that make us careful not to step or reach anywhere we haven’t first looked, alligators we assume to be present in and near water whether we see them or not, and hurricanes.

At the park, the dogs range in size from Yorkie Terrier and Chihuahua to Presa Canario and Standard Labradoodle.   We watched them run, wrestle, dig in the mulch and splash in the black plastic water-filled tub while we talked about the pending weather.

“Is it supposed to be bad here?”

“No, just 45 mile per hour gusts, and not as much rain as the last storm.  The worst of it is supposed to be inland, heading toward Atlanta.”

“It’s going to be bad when it makes landfall in Florida.  Could be a twenty-foot storm surge.”

“I wouldn’t want to be on the Gulf.”

“One of the worst surges we ever had here was from Irma in the Gulf.”

No one told me when I moved to coastal Georgia I would have to worry not only about hurricanes approaching from the Atlantic Ocean, but also the ones that form in the Gulf of Mexico.  Don’t those go to Texas and New Orleans?

When we found ourselves swiping at gnats around our temples, knees and ankles despite having doused ourselves with repellent, we paraded with our dogs through the double gates to our cars.  I leashed Cara, and told the gang I would not see them the next day if it was pouring rain.

“It’s not supposed to start until mid-afternoon,” someone said.

Thursday morning, 6:15 am

I awoke to a text notification from a member of the dog park gang.  Those usually don’t start until 6:30.

—Pouring.—

I could hear it.  Monsoon-intense.  AccuWeather (which I often call AccuWrong) showed the rain stopping in 20 minutes.  And it did.  No tapering off, just an abrupt stop as if someone closed a valve.  An early outer band, which I later heard poured three and a half inches on us, more than had been forecast here for the entire storm.

Thursday morning at the dog park, 7:00 – 7:30 am

Although it wasn’t raining, we huddled under the gazebo where the benches were drier and we’d be protected if another rain band rolled in.  A phone alert heralded a tornado warning.  Those weren’t supposed to start for another eighteen hours.  

The dog park sits almost directly beneath the local siren, which remained quiet.  Later in the day we learned the morning tornado had touched down and caused some damage across the sound, on Daufuskie Island.  As the crow flies, that’s five to seven miles away.  Close eough to ratchet up the nerves.

Thursday @ home

Tybee Island was located on the “dirty” side of Helene, meaning the right side of the storm when you view it on a map or satellite image.  That’s where the most tornadoes and power outages occur.  With landfall projected for 300 miles or so away, and 45 mph maximum gusts forecast here, we were not under any evacuation orders.

I moved lightweight furniture along with Cara’s kiddie pool and dog toys indoors.  I brought cushions inside, but left the heavy wicker furniture on the covered, screened back deck.  If evacuating for a hurricane, that would all come in as well.   I had already, a month earlier for Hurricane Debby, put fresh batteries in my flashlights and the weather radio and stocked up on non-perishable, no-cook food (e.g. canned tuna, apple sauce, etc.).  I live half a block from a pizza dive bar with a generator that – much to the chagrin of local officials and first responders – never closes.  As long as that remained standing, feeding myself would not be an issue.

Late afternoon, between rain bands, I walked a short section of beach.  High surf, windy (but not abnormally so), seconds-long periods of intermittent sunshine.  I met a couple on a road trip from Texas, who next planned to tour the west coast of Florida.

At the house, during each break in the rain, I took Cara outside to do whatever doggie  business she could. 

After dinner, I tried to watch network television but special reports kept interrupting.  The first interruptions were not weather alerts but news of New York City’s mayor having been indicted.  Not exactly a local story!  Before long, that special report was itself interrupted by updates from local meteorologists.  With nothing of immediate urgency and the highest risk of tornadoes still supposedly several hours away, I switched to streaming.

Ten minutes later, my phone vibrated madly and the local tornado siren sounded.

---TO BE CONTINUED---