Here comes another one

Dan Luke wrote:
Hurricane, that is.

Last September I moved airplane and family to Houston to escape hurricane
Ivan. That turned out to be a good move, since the steel shelter I parked
'87D under was destroyed by the storm.


I flew the night of Hurricane Hugo from Raleigh to Charlotte in an Apache.
Since Charlotte was directly along a straight line between Raleigh (where I was)
and Charleston (where the hurricane was) I flew along at Mach 3 and made the
quickest time I'd ever done for that leg. Smooth air, too... until I got down
to about 2000 feet on the approach into Charlotte. I went ahead and tied the
aircraft down as best I could (yoke wrapped up in the seatbelt, one wing and the
tail). The other wing was missing its tiedown ring so there was nothing I could
do about it. Oh, well... que sera, sera.

I woke up around 0400 when the power went off and my ceiling fan stopped. There
was no leaving the neighborhood for the next 30 hours or so due to fallen trees
but then I got out and drove to the airport. Absolutely amazing... that Apache
was bulletproof. Nothing wrong with it at all. Couldn't say the same for some
of the hangared aircraft; several hangars collapsed and wiped out what they were
supposedly protecting.

Anyway, good luck tomorrow.



--
Mortimer Schnerd, RN

VE

"Mortimer Schnerd, RN" wrote

Since Charlotte was directly along a straight line between Raleigh (where
I was)
and Charleston (where the hurricane was) I flew along at Mach 3 and made
the
quickest time I'd ever done for that leg.

I woke up around 0400 when the power went off and my ceiling fan stopped.
There
was no leaving the neighborhood for the next 30 hours or so due to fallen
trees
but then I got out and drove to the airport.

Glad your plane turned out all right.

Ahh, Hugo! Where I am in NC was in that straight line, also. We still had
power and I was watching the radar on TV, and saw the eye wall approach
Lenoir; then the power went out. Massive destruction, everywhere.

Later, I saw a replay of the radar, and as the eye hit the mountains, it
broke up the circulation. As an observer, that was exactly right. We had
the building wind, the wind suddenly switched from East to North, then the
wind suddenly stopped. Sitting blind, I was expecting the other side of the
eye wall to hit, but it never did.

For about two weeks afterwards, anytime you went outside, you could hear the
sound of chainsaws running, in all directions. Life slowly returned to
normal, but it was slow.

The ironic thing was that lots of folks like you fled Charleston, and came
to Charlotte, only to be trapped here, with nearly as much damage as
Charleston.

One rule of hurricanes still holds; you can't out guess them.
--
Jim in NC