another update on Isabel's aftermath

Thanks to John Snowden III for sharing his experience and observations from
NC...


-------- Original Message --------
Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2003 00:58:22 +0000

Brian,

I have some photos of storm damage.  Will be getting more.

I'm on the Board of Directors for our local Red Cross chapter.

The "center" of Isabel passed about 50 miles to the west of where I rode out 
the storm (Elizabeth City, NC).  Sustained winds were 70 mph with gusts to 95 
mph.

My dad recorded a barometric pressure of 28.98 Thursday afternoon (he was 
located about 30 miles further east toward the Outer Banks).

I drove from E. City east to Currituck County this morning.  The damage was 
progressively "less" as you drove east.  Lots of trees down on roads, power 
line, phone lines and houses.

Telephone and power poles were pushed over (some broken, others simply 
displaced the ground and went over).  Road signs were snapped off.  Billboards 
that did not have panels removed were broken off. Portions of rooves were 
stripped of tarpaper and shingles.  Some metal rooves were peeled right off.
Vinyl siding was stripped off some houses.

Vehicles blown off the road.

Ground water was so high, lots of trees were uprooted.

Surprisingly light damage to single and double wide trailers (I saw one where 
the roof was peeled right off).

2-3 feet of soundside flooding due to southwest wind.

Of the 2.0 million customers of Dominion Power in NC and Va, 1.8 million were 
without power during the height of the storm.

In E. City, there was structurral damage to older buildings, toppled chimneys, 
building facades that were ripped off.  Further west in Hertford, NC & Edenton, 
NC (closer to the storms eye) 75% of residences were damaged to some extent.

Some of the Red Cross workers I spoke with said it looked like a war zone the 
closer you were to the path of the eye.

The height of the storm for us was 2 - 4 pm, Thursday.  Then by 7 pm Thursday 
things had died off significantly.  There was a lot more wind out in front of 
the storm than behind it.

I lived in Greenville, NC through Bertha, Fran and Floyd.  This was pretty 
impressive, just from the extent of the wind field, and considerable build up 
to the storm.  If it had been slower moving, it would have been really bad.

I'll send links to pictures when I can upload them to my website.

/John

Please visit my tropical Atlantic headquarters.