Soooo... the storm... good times.
Just leaving the house was an obstacle... our deadbolt is kinda ghetto... the knob on the inside keeps falling off, so we just leave it off and turn the little nubby thing with our fingers... it's really hard if your hands are slippery. Well I couldn't turn it and I couldn't figure it out... I couldn't get out of the house lol. THen I realized the wind was pushing the door, putting stress on the deadbolt, so I leaned against it and it unlocked. I turned the knob and the door just flung open. It was hella windy outside.
Drove to work... very slowly... swerving across the road. It was (still is) a lot more windy and rainy than Charley was for us. I opened my umbrella to walk across the parking lot and it flipped inside out. Screw that...
Started working... around 9:30, the general manager came on the loudspeaker to say he needed everyone to meet up front... the cart corrals (these big aluminum 2 car car-ports) were being blown across the parking lot... we had to secure them before they blew into the cars. It took 10 people to move each one... and the wind was just pushing them around. One was even blown up against the strip mall next door. Needless to say, we all got soaked. SOAKED.
About 10:30, the power went out, but the fresh departments and freezer cooler are on backup generators. And at about 11, those ran out too. We had every associate helping to haul the meat out of the displays and put them in the coolers, and people bagging the bread because it gets rock hard if left out. Then we got to feast on the chicken from the rotisserie cause we couldn't keep it.
I left at 1:30, supposedly the worst is over, but it's still realllllly windy outside. I think the way the storm is rotating, we're gonna get another push from it. The news has been saying, they can't remember the last time a storm formed so quickly so close to shore and then pushed so far inland.
I took some pictures on my way home. There weren't many cars, so a few times I was able to stop and take a clearer picture.
There are no captions, but some are just for dramatic effect... to show how hard the wind was blowing or what had blown over already... the ones of the parking lot... those are the carports we had to move across the parking lot to secure. And the last one is of our lake... that owl on the post... a month ago, that owl was right about eye level. Now it's about knee-high. That's how much the water level has gone up... how much rain we've had.
Gaston Pictures