I woke up Monday morning as my stomach sorted out what to do with the half gallon of Blue Bell Moo-llennium Crunch ice cream I drank Sunday.
You read that right – a half gallon of ice cream. That I drank.
The powerful storm that passed through Cherokee County around 5 p.m. Saturday instantly knocked power out for around 1,000 Duke Energy customers from Pisgah Road through Junaluska Road.
I saw the storm coming thanks to notifications from Cherokee County Emergency Management and weather apps I have on my phone. I decided to postpone a trip to Ingles until the storm passed.
As the storm arrived, I looked out a south-facing window and saw horizontal lines of tree branches and leaves pushed by hurricane-force winds and rain. My mind couldn’t grasp what I was seeing.
I keep the windows on our top floor open to vent warm air. One of them faces west, the direction the storm was coming from.
As I went upstairs to close the windows, the power went out and my attention was diverted. After the storm passed a few minutes later, I checked the top floor for damage and found no sign of a storm – no water, and even a pile of papers near the window remained undisturbed.
Outside, I found a small bundle of leaves and twigs in my driveway, the only sign of the recent storm-front.
‘ACD’ scores
I have four Adirondack chairs in my yard that I measure the strength of a storm with. The remnants of Hurricane Helene, whose eye passed just west of our house near Andrews, had an ACD score (Adirondack chair disruption) of four-plus, since some of the chairs were blown down the hill.
Saturday’s ACD score was one – one chair was knocked on its side.
Then I heard my neighbors.
The couple across the road live in a camper trailer while they build their house. A tall but juvenile pine was pushed over and brushed the side of their trailer, essentially missing it by zero inches. They praised Jesus for that.
Next door, the couple’s driveway was covered with treetops and branches that were snapped off by the wind. Patio chairs and table were shoved to the side (their ACD score was four).
My neighbors behind us knew the weather got frisky, but nothing out of the ordinary.
Straight-line wind
Best I can tell, our house was on the edge of a straight-line wind as it traveled east. We and one neighbor were spared, while my three other neighbors weren’t, yet all escaped injury and property damage.
I helped cover Helene for a sister newspaper in Mitchell County, which suffered catastrophic damage. Though much smaller and weaker in scope, I got a Helene-like vibe as I explored the area following Saturday’s storm.
Earlier in the day, I walked our dog, Rupee, up Phillips Creek Road and chatted with three people staying at Hawkesdene, an event venue where a big wedding was being held that night.
Following the storm, Phillips Creek Road was blocked by a fallen tree and debris, along with downed power lines. I feared the worst and got in my car to drive where I could get a signal and call for help.
Pisgah Road northeast of our house was blocked by a fallen tree so I headed the other way toward Fairview Road. About halfway down the hill, a juvenile tree leaned across the road but left room for one lane of traffic, so I took it.
An N.C. Department of Transportation crew was headed up the hill, so I figured help was on the way, and I continued into town to find a wifi signal. My old standby, the Andrews Public Library, didn’t show up on my phone, so I drove to Morning Fog. It was closed, but its wifi was operating, so I checked in at Duke Energy’s outage site to get an update. Social media was strangely silent about the storm.
I ducked into the DG Market next door and got two bags of ice, the olive oil I forgot on my last shopping trip, and a few other odds and ends, including canned soup.
The power
The storm knocked out power to thousands of Duke customers in both North and South Carolina, including Pisgah and Junaluska roads, but Duke optimistically said power would be restored in a few hours.
I had my doubts, and updated my wife Sarah when I returned home. On my way back, all the roads were reopened, thanks to local volunteer firefighters with chainsaws and the DOT crew. I checked on Hawkesdene, and the wedding was still on, thanks to generators and a willing spirit. That couple will have a great story to tell their children.
My instincts were correct about the power. It was out throughout the day Sunday. We didn’t see any hint of linemen in our area Saturday night or most of Sunday, and I told Sarah not to expect power to be restored until Monday at the earliest.
I put the ice in the freezer along with milk and other perishables, then noticed the sorry state of the ice cream.
The only thing worse than melted ice cream is refrozen melted ice cream. Throughout Sunday, I drank five coffee cups of Moo-llennium Crunch ice cream but couldn’t finish the sixth. (I tipped the scale five pounds heavier Monday.)
Around 9 p.m. Sunday, we heard the distinctive “beep-beep-beep” of a utility truck backing into place. The troops arrived in the thick of night, and I fell asleep.
At midnight sharp, I awoke to find the house aglow with electricity. Our internet was even back, which I discovered when Duke Energy texted me a notice that power was back.
Power came back on around 10:30 p.m. Sunday, Duke said, nearly 30 hours after going dark. I have nothing but praise for utility linesmen and local volunteer firefighters.
Survival
In my mind, there are four levels of survivalism – people who aren’t prepared, people who are sort of prepared, people who are well prepared and the fourth level (we all know a fourth-level survivalist).
I figure we’re between level two and three. We don’t have a generator or a bunker, but we do have a wood stove, a propane grill, a covered horse trough full of clean water for bathing and flushing toilets, and lots of candles, flashlights and cell phone batteries.
My neighbors have every tool imaginable, but they don’t have a backup water supply; they made trips into town ferrying water to flush their toilets. Guaranteed they won’t make that mistake again.
The couple across the street faired well despite their near-fatal brush with a tree, but their septic system pumps uphill, and that means electricity, so I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.
For us, we had grilled hot dogs for dinner Sunday, and hot water to make tea and wash up with. I estimate we could get by for a week with what we had, although I kicked myself for not having enough fresh candles or shelf-stable food in the cabinets.
As survivalists go, we fit in the category expecting order to be restored in a few days.
My neighbors on top of a nearby hill had their generator going and life seemed normal when I checked on them, but then we noticed several trees around their house had their tops snapped off.
The region
Colleagues reported storm damage and power outages in a wide area, mainly south of the four-lane highway, around Bellview, Martins Creek and Ranger. Photos taken with my phone record GPS data, so I can track the path of the winds that kept me and my neighbors so busy over the weekend.
Andrews seemed unaffected. Clerks at Ingles weren’t aware that everything south of town was without power, peppered with fallen trees and tree limbs.
Because of tell-tale debris on the roads, I figure we experienced a straight-line wind event, which Google defines as:
“Straight-line winds are non-rotating, high-speed winds from thunderstorms that can cause significant damage, sometimes exceeding 100 mph. These winds are often confused with tornado winds, but they do not involve a rotating column of air. Straight-line winds are a common cause of property damage, including downed trees, power lines, and structural damage.”
The event crossed Pisgah Road around Garnet Ridge Drive, headed east by northeast and recrossed Pisgah Road near Andrews Truss and Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters. It continued through Collett Creek and then Junaluska Road at Collett Woods Trail, where it toppled mature oaks and picked on one house in particular, covering it and a truck parked out front with debris, branches and fallen trees.
This is what findenergy.com, which tracks power outages, reported early Saturday evening: “Cherokee County, North Carolina – 4,157 out of 17,831 tracked meters (23.31%) are without power in Cherokee County, North Carolina.”
As we saw with Hurricane Helene, you can tell a lot about a storm by the power outages it causes.
I knew Helene, I helped cover it, and the storm we had Saturday was no Helene.
But it was bad just the same.