Thursday, October 29, 2020

Would I lie to you?

No, I would not.

Here is the driveway of some friends of ours this morning after Hurricane/Tropical Storm (pick one) Zeta passed through north Georgia during the night:


And here's the same view a few hours later when some Good Samaritans showed up and began to remove the debris:


Our friends, Cindy and Darrell, attend the same church we do. I am showing you these photos, which were taken from their front porch, to prove several things:

  • Cherokee County has a lot of trees.
  • Atlanta really is a city built in a forest.
  • People here have long driveways.
  • People here have steep driveways.
  • North Georgia has a lot of hills.
  • It doesn't necessarily take good fences to make good neighbors.

17 comments:

  1. They really had some damage. Thank goodness it was their driveway and not their house.

    I love the way many southern cities keep so many of the trees even though it can be a problem in a storm.

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  2. Replies
    1. Sue, I’ll double that Hooray and raise you a Hip, Hip.

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  3. What can I say other than "Wow!". There's more trees in those photos than there is within 5 miles of where I'm typing this.

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    Replies
    1. Graham, Mrs. RWP and I put 40 miles on our car today and we probably saw more trees than are within 500 miles of where you live.

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  4. So glad there are still some Good Samaritans!

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    Replies
    1. I agree, Kathy. Long may they wave, I mean be willing to help.

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  5. There are good people everywhere. It is good to remember that in times where we all seem like enemies.

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    Replies
    1. Linda, in spite of two books in the Bible (Psalms and Romans) that say “There is none that doeth good, no, not one” I believe I agree with you.

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  6. All I can say is WOW. I see that it was horrible but I hope it was no worse.

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    Replies
    1. Emma, I believe six people lost their lives nationwide from Hurricane Zeta; three of them were in Georgia. One of them was in my county. None of this is acceptable but as calamities go this one was minor ( unless you were a tree).

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  7. I meant to say this last night but trying to comment on a blog on a cellphone involves signing in etc and that's a faff. You said the winds were 50/55mph. I was sitting last night (and I am again this morning) in 55 mph winds gusting stronger. It's hardly raising a stir on land although all but the very biggest bulk carriers in the area have run for cover - no ferries. Surely to do all that damage your winds must have gusted a lot stronger than 50mph! It looks like the South of England did in 1987 when the hurricane hit with winds around 100mph.

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    Replies
    1. Graham, I'm sure you are right. The figures I cited were from radio reports. Atlanta's airport (50 miles south of us) recorded 55 mph winds. The city of Rome, Georgia (50-60 miles west of us) recorded 51 mph winds. But according to the annotated Doppler map app on my iPhone, the remnants of the eye of Hurricane Zeta passed very near Canton (my area) on its trip from Hattiesburg, Mississippi to Tuscaloosa, Alabama to between Gadsden, Alabama and Cedartown, Georgia to Sylva and Franklin in western North Carolina, and my understanding is that hurricane winds are always strongest right around the eye. Our local Electric Membership Cooperative, which covers Cherokee and Forsyth counties, has stated that the storm damage has been the worst it has encountered in its 87 years of existence. So yes, I agree with you, that 50/55 mph winds are not sufficient to cause what happened when Zeta blew through north Georgia. The miracle, if that's what you want to call it, is that only three people lost their lives. As calamaties go, this one will be forgotten as an extremely minor blip in history.

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    2. Thanks for that, Bob. I can now understand why it was so traumatic. I'm sorry to hear that lives were lost. Hurricanes can do that so easily. I think 18 lost their lives back in '87 in England and in the hurricane of 2005 when I lost my conservatory (129mph winds recorded and hence the reason I now have storm shutters on some windows) 5 people lost their lives in a storm surge in Uist.

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  8. I hope your neighbours had plenty of supplies in or they'll be drinking their coffee black!

    Seriously though, what would we do without good samaritans

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  9. Kylie, milk (for coffee and children) is one of the two necessities that fly off supermarket shelves around here when a bad storm is predicted. The other one is toilet paper. And according to the original story, which I know you know, without good samaritans we would all be lying in ditches alongside dangerous stretches of road, battered and bleeding.

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