There are times I wonder if Coral Gables (home of the National Hurricane Center near Miami, FL) has it in for us. Last year, we got chased by Charley which came ashore about twenty miles southwest of Ocean Isle just to the north of Myrtle Beach as a Category 1 (minimal) storm (which was better than the Category 4 it was when it came ashore near Naples, FL!).
Mind you, there are always trade-offs when coming to the beach in September. Generally kids are back in school and most of the tourists are gone so that’s pretty good. However, it’s also at the historic peak time of the hurricane season. Fran and Floyd were both devastating September storms that struck North Carolina.
We knew Ophelia was lurking off the coast before we left Garner as it had formed at the beginning of the month and was one already one of the longer-lived tropical systems. And we had a nice big warning sign across the street about what even a minimal hurricane can do when it erodes the beach the houses are standing upon. So as you can imagine, we’ve been tuned to The Weather Channel and their Tropical Update segment.
We were already seeing some of the rougher surf and tides that herald the approach of the storm. The house across the street used to have a staircase on the west side of the house. The operative words are used to. The rough surf combined with a higher-than-normal tide ripped it right off and it’s getting beaten to smithereens in the roiling surf now.
But that’s not going to stop us from enjoying a relaxing day at the beach!
