After Florence

After making landfall near Wrightsville Beach, NC, Friday morning, the storm spent Friday and Saturday moving slower than most people walk across the southern part of NC and eastern part of SC.  Florence is a tropical depression now, and two days later is only 35 km SW of Columbia, SC and still moving slowly.

Florence’s path took it north of us, so we ended up on the dry side and just got a couple days of breeze and light steady rain..  Most of NC is still getting rain from Florence and probably will for at least the rest of today.  I think we’re done with Florence now, at least until all the rain it dumped makes its way downstream.

We started preparation early for Florence.  Irma taught us a few things about getting prepared last year, and there were a few more things we were reminded of this year with Florence.

• Check your battery operated things.  I forgot about the Maglight flashlights we have, and didn’t have enough D size batteries to replace all the batteries that were already in them.  The battery stock at Lowe’s and Publix were pretty much wiped out (plenty of AA and AAA batteries left though).  I could have tried a few other places, but we have enough other flashlights around that I wasn’t too concerned.  Will definitely make sure we have enough D cells on hand for next time though.
• Decided that having 7 gallons of gas on hand for the generator wasn’t quite enough, so two more 5 gallon containers were added to the collection.
• Arrange the refrigerator and freezer plugs so that they’re more accessible from the side, rather than having to move them away from the wall to reach them in case they need to be plugged into the generator.

I think we were pretty well prepared for Florence.  Even though the storm didn’t bring us any severe conditions, it made for good practice for next time.