just checking in -

Survived hurricane Helene. There's an area about 50 miles by 150 miles in western North Carolina that got flattened by high winds. We have about 115,000 people still cut off because of bridges and landslides. I think we lost about 200 bridges on public roads just in my little corner of the world, and thousands on private property. We got 30 inches of rain in 36 hours at my place. There are entire towns that were washed away down stream and several important dams failed. The entire water treatment plant for Buncombe County and Asheville is gone. We lost 45 out of 47 substations in the county. The French broad river crested 10 feet higher than the previous record flood in 1916. Many of you probably know a lot more than I do about it. We finally have a radio station broadcasting again. With power back on to a million people now, those resources are being concentrated in my area and we have thousands of bucket trucks and excavators here; and probably have a chainsaw for every house. It looks like about one house in five has been heavily damaged by trees.

this is Lake Lure, which is a quite well known beauty spot here in the mountains where several movies have been filmed.

 

Hope you and yours are ok, speedy recovery to all and Thous who are not may they find Peace.
Catastrophic damage and loss of life

 

.....and then came Milton! Please Phil, check in again, so we know you're with us!

 

It's been pretty weird. We have had perfect weather ever since - warm, calm and dry. Perfect for drone recon and chopper ops. They are playing around with water in part of the Asheville water system again. It's just muddy reservoir water being used to find breaks in the distribution system. The main intake and main outlets from the water treatment facility were swept away, and the pipes got packed with boulders. There is no estimate for when the reservoir turbidity will drop to levels that will allow the treatment plant to operate. They are going to install huge curtains in the reservoir and try and add coagulants near the new intake works. I'm back in working order - I have power and water now for several days (no cable and the cable company doesn't know where the problem is). I've done a bit of work on old equipment people had pushed into the woods donkeys years ago and are now pulling out again and trying to make run.

Seriously though, if this had happened a little later in the year and the weather had sucked afterward, it would have been so much worse. Haven't heard of any Cholera or other problems yet. But I'm really worried about health problems over the winter due to the water situation and idiots hacking their pipes as it gets colder and backflowing the system. I think we had about 70,000 people working on our roads, water, and power for a couple weeks.

 

Initial damage estimates in western North Carolina are 53 Billion dollars. We were talking about downbursts with the Bayesian sinking. Here's some drone footage of what it looks like all over western NC.