Getting ready for Gabrielle |
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| I promised an update on Tropical Storm Gabrielle last evening, Sunday, Sept. 9. However, I waited and waited along with most folks on Hatteras and Ocracoke for the storm to get here. It never really did. “We’ve been calling it Gabby because it’s been all talk and no action,” a Mechanicsville, Va., tourist at Virginia Beach told The Virginian-Pilot in this morning’s edition. And that woman was right on the mark. continued from front page.... Northeasters last Thanksgiving and in May were worse than Gabby. Gabrielle made landfall about 11:45 a.m. at near Cape Lookout on the Core Banks with winds of 50 mph. It moved up the Pamlico Sound, west of Hatteras and Ocracoke, during the afternoon. Actually, it was sunny off and on with little rain all afternoon. |
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| The
wind did blow about as advertised by forecasters. The highest
gust at the National Weather Service’s automated weather station
in Frisco was 53 mph. However, we all know that sheltered
reporting system never gets it right. Tony Spencer, Hyde
County’s emergency manager, reported a gust to 61 mph at Hatteras
Inlet. It was easily blowing 60 or so at my house on the sound in
Frisco by dark last evening. All the heavy wind was from the southwest. Ferries to and from Ocracoke stopped running in the early afternoon – except for a few Hatteras Inlet runs in mid-afternoon. Now comes the heartbreaker. We had only .23 inches of rain on Hatteras and about the same on Ocracoke. Along the southeast North Carolina coast, the rainfall was plentiful. Beaufort had more than 8 inches, and Morehead City had more than 7. Gabrielle did nothing to help with the drought on the islands. As of yesterday, only 20 inches of rain had fallen at Frisco, down 19.09, or almost 50 percent, for the year. The forecasters say that every storm is different, and Gabrielle certainly was a different kind of tropical system. The storm came ashore near Cape Lookout at 11:45 a.m. It was still sunny, humid, and breezy on Hatteras and Ocracoke – and so it continued for most of the afternoon.  The
center of the storm moved up the Pamlico Sound with little or no
rain. All the precipitation was left behind along the coast near
landfall. According to the Weather Channel meteorologists, the storm was affected by shearing winds that pushed the heavy rain away from the center. Gabrielle also ran into dry air along the coast. So Gabrielle might not have been much of a tropical storm, but I guess that just depended on where you were and when you were there. There was no sound tide on the southern part of Hatteras, though there was about 10 inches of tide on Highway 12 in Salvo about dark. Eventually there was also water from the sound on Pea Island. A good friend and colleague of mine, headed back to Nags Head about 9 p.m. after a day of reporting on Hatteras. She says now she should have known better than to strike out on the highway after dark in the wind and the rain. However, there was no ocean overwash at Mirlo Beach in Rodanthe, usually the first place to go under water, so she figured she was safe. She made it to Nags Head but called to say, “I’ve never been so scared in my life.” “I was driving,” she said, “and out of nowhere there was water on the road, and all of a sudden it got very deep….Then the wind and the rain picked up.” She was in her sedan, not in an SUV. In the distance she could see dim tail lights. “If he wasn’t ahead of me, I never could have done it,” she said. She came to another area of deep water before the Bonner Bridge. “When you see the water is too deep, what do you do?” she asked. She opted to keep going, but says she learned a lesson, even after years of living here and writing about storms, including drivers stranded on Pea Island. “People should not go near Pea Island in a storm, especially after dark. It’s like the end of the world out there.” Highway 12 was closed by law enforcement and Dare County emergency managers for three hours, just after she made her scary trip north. Today, by the way, is the statistical peak of the hurricane season. And there are several other disturbances out there in the eastern Atlantic, heading west. One of them could become Humberto. |
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