The Weather app on my phone is sending all kinds of warnings.
We’ve got a tornado watch until 10 pm. I can see Amelia Island from the dock, waves are supposed to be 8 to 12 feet high, much worse than the waves we watched devastate the shore during our family beach week in early August.
Flood stage could hit 4 feet out in the creek and the St. Mary’s River beyond the marsh. That’s not quite enough to get in the yard, but it’s enough to have my next-door neighbor’s dock looking like it did during Hurricane Nicole again:
And I’m on the eastern coast of Georgia. The eye of Hurricane Helene will likely pass at least 100 miles west of us. I would hope for more distance between us and the storm, except that I don’t want to wish this storm on anyone. But I feel for the people in this storm’s path…
A 20 foot storm surge is coming for the Florida coast. The weather service describes it as “unsurvivable,” like the surge Hurricane Michael brought to Mexico Beach in 2018.
Michael was a Cat 5 storm. With any luck, Helene will “only” be a Cat 4 when it makes landfall this evening.
My daughter just texted from her apartment in New Orleans to check in. How’s that for irony? I was checking on her just three weeks ago…
Last year at this time, she was working for Youth Corps and was deployed to the Big Bend area of Florida for a month after Hurricane Idalia. She and her crew were doing rough framing repair, tearing out saturated wood and hanging new plywood.
Of course Home Insurance didn’t cover all the damage from Idalia. Some people still have blue plastic tarps on their roofs.
It will be worse this time, insurance companies in Florida typically won’t renew a policy that’s been paid on once. Property loss will be worse, compensation will be worse, many people will have no choice but to pack up and leave…
Others will choose a novel approach: instead of rebuilding, they’ll buy an RV and park it on their property. That makes it much easier to bug out the next time a big hurricane hits Florida. I just hope this one is the last one for 2024.
Cheers,
Briton Ryle
Chief Investment Strategist
Outsider Club
X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/BritonRyle
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