DISCLAIMER: For many, certainly in the Bahamas, this was a killer storm, with unprecedented damage. Others both South and North of us, and even some here in our area, experienced damage from which they have to recover. This post in no way means to belittle any of that. Our thoughts and prayers have been with all those who've suffered in some way with this storm.
That being said, I'll reiterate that I always have mixed emotions about these hurricanes in being grateful that we dodged the bullet ourselves. Missing us means it has to hit elsewhere, in most cases, and my prayers are never to be spared at the expense of someone else's pain. I wish it'd just blow out into the sea, as most of these do, but that's not always the case. I'm fully aware that one day, we will not be so lucky.
As for us here, this all ended up being much ado about nothing. Were it not for the knowledge that a Category 2 or 3 hurricane was blowing by our coast, what we actually ended up seeing from Dorian was considerably less than some other isolated storms we've seen, both here and in Indiana, and would have been ignored by the local news otherwise. Little bit of wind and rain and that was about it. We're buffered a bit by Hilton Head Island, and those along the actual coast took a little heavier hit, but here in Bluffton, what we got was minimal.
Couple of things to note: 1) How far one is from the center of the storm is critical. As we saw, the Bahamas sat right in the eye of the storm and was ravaged. We, on the other hand, rested roughly 100 miles away from the center in the outer bands and saw little to no damage at all. 2) The paths of these things in some cases waiver literally from hour to hour. 24-48 hours, the forecasters have the path pretty well down, and even then, a wobble of even just a few miles can have a tremendous impact on how much damage one suffers.
Here's the problem: Perhaps it was still being gun-shy from Hurricane Matthew a few years ago, or perhaps being gun shy from seeing what Dorian laid on the Bahamas, or both, but local officials virtually ignored all the data and path forecasts we were getting as it approached us.
Let me explain.
The short background is that Hurricane Matthew in October of 2016 put a direct hit on Hilton Head. They won't typically announce a hurricane landfall on a barrier island, and technically, it didn't really make a landfall on Hilton Head, but for all intents and purposes, it hit us directly. Matthew was a slightly less severe storm than Dorian, but the eye hugged the coastline from Florida to North Carolina and took one of those last minute wobbles virtually right into Hilton Head Island before heading off north. We took a direct hit of 80-100 mph winds, and saw 14-20" of rain in a 24-hour period.
Locally, they were woefully unprepared for it. This area hadn't seen a major hit in 30 years, since Hurricane Hugo in 1989, and simply weren't ready as they underestimated it.
The good news is that they are determined not to make the same mistake again and are now significantly better prepared to deal with a hurricane. The bad news is that they've taken a drastically fatalistic approach to each subsequent storm and have significantly overestimated the impacts we'd see from them. Since Matthew, we've faced Hurricanes Irma, Florence, Michael, and now Dorian, and they've overshot them all.
Florence and Michael we virtually saw nothing from. Missed us completely. Irma brought some wind and rain and some storm surge flooding that caused some problems, but otherwise fizzled before it got here. Dorian has been the first since Matthew to show any real teeth at all, and it turned out to be a little nip at best.
Now, we're thankful for that, but the problem is that local officials were telling us that this storm would be equal to, and likely worse, than Matthew. We were told to prepare for significant damage and flooding, and to be prepared to be without power for days. Mandatory evacuations were ordered nearly 72 hours before it was set to pass us, with no promise at all of when we might be able to return to our homes.
All the while, the data and the forecasts were showing no such thing. Notwithstanding the possibilities of the path changing, even 72 hours out, the forecasted path consistently showed to be considerably off the coast ever since it left the Bahamas, and I never saw a single rainfall estimate above 6-10", and most hovered in the 3-6" range. I saw several broadcasts where the path of Matthew and predicted path of Dorian were shown side by side, and the two never got within 50 miles of each other, most showing them anywhere from 75-100 miles apart. Dorian was a stronger storm -- not by a lot, mind you, but stronger -- but Matthew was significantly closer, almost on top of us. Moreover, there were no significant damage reports coming out of Florida and Georgia as it worked its way up the coast. Some localized street flooding and that was about it. Nothing to hint it packed a heavy punch for us.
I'm no expert, I acknowledge that. And I'll never pretend to know more about hurricanes than the professionals, but I kept asking myself after each local press conference, "How do they keep saying this one is gonna be worse?" I mean, even the lay person after a few go 'rounds can get a general idea of how the weather works, right? And simple physics will tell you that 3-6" of rain is never going to be worse than 14"-20" of rain. There simply was no real reason -- outside of general hurricane unpredictability -- to believe Dorian was going to be any significant problem.
True, we're in a season of King Tides right now. King Tides are larger than normal tides. Adding any level of storm surge during a King Tide is problematic and enhances the chances for inland flooding. EVEN THEN... I never saw a single forecast that predicted the total surge and tide to be higher than the record flooding we saw during Matthew. Every forecast I saw predicted it at well over a foot below. Still potentially bad, of course, but not to the level of Matthew.
They predicted the probability of hurricane-force wind gusts ( 75 mph+) but never predicted the sustained winds to get anywhere above Tropical Storm force (39-74 mph). A Tropical Storm here really is not a big deal. In the end, we barely got even that with Dorian.
Look, I'm not faulting Governor McMaster for the evacuations. He has to put safety and caution above all else, and politically, you know as well as I do that nothing he does will please everyone. But there's also something to be said for not only the financial burdens caused to those who have to evacuate, but also the loss of revenue to local businesses that an evacuation causes, and calling for one unnecessarily can be very troublesome for a local business. Not to mention the sheer cost of mobilizing and utilizing local resources and officials to carry out an evacuation. You know how much it costs to evacuate a hospital?
Last year, an evacuation was ordered a full week ahead of Hurricane Florence's projected landfall, when it's path at that time was several hundred miles north of us, nowhere even in the cone of uncertainty. He rescinded it a day later after much protesting, but the damage to businesses had already been done as people heeded the initial order and customers and the workforce left the area. In the end, we didn't see so much as a breeze from Florence. But local businesses took a hit.
This year, they waited longer, but still issued one when all the data was showing we weren't going to get much. The fatalistic warnings we were getting from officials just didn't jibe with the forecasts, even as there was reason to be cautious.
I don't know what the answer is to all this. I'm really just ranting, as the truth is that it really didn't affect me one way or the other. I have places to go if I choose to evacuate, and we're supplied if we ride it out. If you're Governor McMaster, you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't. I don't envy the decisions he has to make. I just know that evacuating, in general, is "such a pain in the ass" as one of my local friends so eloquently put it, and that the evacuations and warnings have really hurt some local businesses when in the end, they simply weren't necessary. One can only hope that the officials can use these experiences, as well as the experience from Matthew to make better educated guesses as we move forward.
So I'll end my final update with this: I had hoped to learn some lessons by riding this one out. Given there really wasn't any teeth to Dorian -- at least for us -- there wasn't much to learn and we'll be pretty much back to square 1 whenever the next one comes by, which it is surely to do. I'm thankful for the prayers and grateful we've dodged yet another bullet, but I would urge you to keep the prayers going for those who were not so fortunate. Until next time...
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