Author: Shelley Powers

Categories
Savannah Weather

Debby does the neighborhood

Flooded neighborhood with water, calm and glassy on the road, trees on either side
Flooded Chief of Love Road

This morning, at the crack of dawn, I braved the heat and humidity to walk down to see the flooding on Chief of Love Road.

A police car blocked one lane into the road, but folks could get around it to reach the non-flooded homes. However, cars were parked over the sidewalks in order to protect them from the water. They could be from the cut off Teal Lake area.

The entrance to Teal Lake, isolated because of the flood.
I suspect the subdivision being cut off flooding is going to put a crimp into home sales

Or from the Fords Pointe townhouses, still accessible, but with flooded streets.

Flooded town home complex streets.
Fords Pointe with flooded streets
Town houses from the back, with flood waters very close
Back of the town houses, with very close flood waters

Our subdivision isn’t at risk because we’re at an elevation above the area. According to FEMA, we have zero chance of flooding. But after seeing how much of the area is flooded based on 8 inches of rain, and knowing that thanks to climate change, future hurricanes will drop more rain, I’m no longer so confident about our safety.

Thankfully, the Ogeechee river is starting to go down. Slowly. But homes have been flooded, so normalcy is a ways into the future.

And peak hurricane season for us isn’t until September.

Categories
Climate Change Savannah Weather

Flood city

A flooded Highway 17, completely closed off
Highway 17 from Chatham county into Bryan.

The Ogeechee river still hasn’t fully crested yet in the Savannah area. All the roads around my home are now closed, either completely or to thru traffic. We’re not at risk of flooding, but others aren’t as lucky.

River records were broken in Ellabell and Richmond Hill. And this with us getting only about 10 inches of rain from tropical storm Debby, instead of the 20 or more originally predicted.

Climate change isn’t creating more hurricanes, but the ones we get last longer and drop more rain. Debby is only the beginning, I hate to think what will happen when that 20 inches of rain comes.

Add to this, the leaders in our area and their very poor planning. They sacrifice all in the name of growth. They’re allowing development on wetlands and into marshes. The wetlands are nature’s sponges; they help control how much water floods the streets and how quickly it flows into the river.

The new developments have these little stormwater lagoons that are supposed to take the place of the wetlands. Well, as we found out this week: they failed.

The hurried and excessive development is putting stress on infrastructure, including road access and stormwater management. And all they’re doing now, is starting a study to see how to fix it. A study.

By allowing this uncontrolled growth, more homes will be put at risk, and we’ll be dealing with increased river and stormwater flooding at the same time climate change is raining sea levels and increasing rainfall during tropical cyclones.

Flood insurance. We’re supposed to be completely out of any risk zone, but I’m not sure I can bank on this assumption now.

Categories
Government Legal, Laws, and Regs The Democratic Difference

It is none of our damn business

My Dad shortly before he died, wearing a t-shirt and holding his favorite carved wood cane
My Dad shortly before he died

My Dad, who was a Republican, would have liked Tim Walz. He would have liked Walz’s plain speaking. He would have admired his bluntness, especially when Walz says that a woman’s right to choose is none of our damn business. He would have liked it because that’s exactly what my Dad used to say.

When Dad and I talked about things like abortion, his philosophy was, “It’s none of my business what happens between a woman and a doctor. This is no one’s business but the woman and her doctor.”

He felt the same thing about same-sex marriage: it was none of his business. I know he would feel the same thing about trans treatment: it was none of his business.

He took that same belief to what he expected from his elected representatives: interfering in a woman’s right to healthcare isn’t the government’s business. Whether a woman has an abortion or not isn’t the business of the state legislature. Or Congress. They have work to do that is their business, and abortion, same-sex marriage,  pronoun use, trans healthcare, what books people read … none of these are their damn business.

My Dad was born in 1910. He didn’t always understand why a woman would want an abortion, but her having one, was none of his business. He didn’t fully understand the LGBTQ+ community, but he never expressed disapproval of any member of the community because it wasn’t his business to approve or disapprove. He felt he didn’t have the right to make judgements on how other people lived as long as how they lived didn’t hurt anyone else.

It was none of his damn business. And he fought in World War II as part of the 82nd Airborne to ensure that others didn’t interfere where they had no right to be.

Now, please take some time to watch Lawrence O’Donnell rip apart today’s media in one of his most eloquent and important video appearances, ever. Because he’s telling the media what is their business, and that they are failing.

PS I’ll tell you something else about my Dad: he never would have voted for Donald Trump.

 

Categories
Just Shelley The Democratic Difference Weather

Debby didn’t do Savannah

Satellite image of the eye of tropical storm Debby directly over Savannah.
The eye of Debby passing directly over Savannah.

Well, we lucked out. Debby was slow moving, which wasn’t good. But it degraded over land. Better yet, it grabbed and incorporated a dry air mass that kept most of the heavier overnight rain away.

We lost power, so I don’t have an accurate rain measurement from my system. However, according to the University of Georgia weather station across the street from me, we had a total of 8.01 inches in less than 24 hours.

Now, we’ll get about an inch of rain today, maybe an inch tomorrow, and it will be done.

So far the only damage is to our roof dryer vent, which seems to be weeping some water internally and sneaking out through a join. Not a big problem. And the power outage didn’t last long enough to spoil food in the fridge or freezer.

Other sections of the city weren’t as lucky, as there was quite a bit of flash flooding. Chatham county and Savannah really need to think about better storm water management, and how much unrestricted development they’re both allowing.

Anyway, last TS post for this storm.  Debby just said “Hey!” and is passing on through—its eye is directly overhead as I write this.

And Kamala Harris picked Tim Walz for VP! Let the politics begin!

Categories
Savannah Weather

And Debby is still coming to town

NOAA's rain chance graphic, showing most rain going into South Carolina just north of Savannah
Latest NOAA rain map

Previous places I’ve lived have had emergencies that come up quickly and are usually over quickly. I’ve lived through a major ice storm in Grande Isle, Vermont, earthquakes in Washington and California, blizzards in Washington and Massachusetts, even Mount St. Helens, in Yakima, Washington.

A hurricane, though, is a different beastie. It’s like living in the land of giants and seeing a big ole shoe coming at you, and you can’t get out of the way. You’re waiting and watching. Waiting and watching.

We’re experiencing the impact of outer bands of Debby, which means periods of gusty winds, heavy rain, even a tornado watch, interspersed with periods of calm. Tonight and into tomorrow is when the real fun will start.

According to both Enki and NOAA, though we could get upwards of 15 inches of rain, the worst of the rain will likely occur in South Carolina. I’m sorry for our neighbors, but it’s not our fault and forgive us for being relieved. HOWEVER, not all of the models agree with this. Both the GFS and the ECMWF still show the major rain impact in our area.

(Edit: the GFS has since reversed itself, so the NOAA map seems more accurate all the time.)

Regardless, we’re going to get flooding rains. We already have a major river flood alert, and Savannah has put out warnings for so many roads that will flood that it’s just plain idiotic to drive tomorrow unless you must.

One of the bigger problems is community communication and its reliance on social media apps like X-witter, is not working well, and I’ll have more on this later this week. In the meantime, I’m just going to be sitting here, watching that shoe coming down.