Planes and hurricanes

WDD said:
Yeah - Fernandina. Can you tell I’m a tourist LOL.
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My mom lived in a senior's facility there for a while. My sister is just west of you in Yulee, and @2-Bit Speed and @SkyChaser are just across the river near Kingsland.

I enjoy Fernandina. You can get some fantastic shrimp there, and Ft. Clinch is a neat place to visit. I took this photo of a boomer there a few years ago, standing on the wall at Ft. Clinch.

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Ed Haywood said:
Eye passing West of Tampa now, so looks like we are safe.

Up to Cat 4 now, and headed for Tallahassee area. Fortunately that area of the coast is sparsely populated, and the terrain will absorb the storm surge. Looks like Helene will be a mess but not a killer.
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For some. We won’t be in the clear from storm surge until around 2AM. The attached pic was from about 19:15 or roughly 45 min from this post. The water has encroached about 2 feet more into our backyard since I took that pic.
 

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We dodged the bullet on this one. 5” of rain today. Max wind at the house was 17kts. No storm surge (low tide at 6pm and a half moon helped).
 
Gusts up to 60 Kts now. Yeah, I’m glad I rented a hangar space tonight….
 
So my plane (and all my other toys) survived without issue. Our house unfortunately is trashed. We estimate we had 3-4 ft of water throughout. I’ve already filed an insurance claim and the cleanup begins today once we get back from checking on the hangar/plane. It will be sometime before the house is habitable again unfortunately.
 
tsts4 said:
So my plane (and all my other toys) survived without issue. Our house unfortunately is trashed. We estimate we had 3-4 ft of water throughout. I’ve already filed an insurance claim and the cleanup begins today once we get back from checking on the hangar/plane. It will be sometime before the house is habitable again unfortunately.
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So sorry to hear that. Do you plan to make any changes for when this happens again?
 
Wow, @tsts4 , I'm very sorry about your home. At least you and your toys are safe, and that's what matters. ;) Do you have someplace to stay until your home is repaired?
 
Our closed runway here at KLBE is now an impromptu ramp for 15 Gulfstream private jets that have come up here from GA/FL.

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JOhnH said:
So sorry to hear that. Do you plan to make any changes for when this happens again?
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No big picture changes. Some miner ones on how and where we store stuff, but that’s about it. We understand the risks of living on the water.
Half Fast said:
Wow, @tsts4 , I'm very sorry about your home. At least you and your toys are safe, and that's what matters. ;) Do you have someplace to stay until your home is repaired?
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We have lots of temp housing options to get us through the point where we can reoccupy the house. Right now it’s a bit overwhelming and it’s draining trying to stay on task and eat the elephant one bite at a time.Pretty exhausted both mentally and physically at this point.
 
MBDiagMan said:
Hurricanes aside, I HATE seeing any aircraft tied down out in the weather. My sympathy goes out to those who can’t get a hangar. It took me a long time to get one, but I didn’t buy a plane until I had a hangar lined up. Many people tie down in the weather, but there are so many bad things that happen to aircraft out in the weather. Usually nothing sudden, but general degradation over time. I know lots of people just let them deteriorate with no worry, but I don’t understand how anyone can stand by and watch it happen.

I even hate to tie down in the weather for any period of time when I travel, but it’s tough to avoid. We have a beach house in Galveston, which is a tough, 6 hour drive from where we live, but an easy hour and a half flight. We have a family get together there for a week at July Fourth every year and I usually just tie it down in the salt air for a week and bear it. This past Fourth, Beryl was headed for the Gulf with a slight chance of hitting Galveston. I decided to gut out the drive rather than risk being tied down in a Hurricane or cutting our family time short in order to get the plane out of harms way. It turned out to head in on the day we were going to leave. To your question, in my mind, the only acceptable solution is having a hangar available far enough from the coast to be as safe as possible.

My $0.02,
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Been waiting 17 years for a hangar…better than not flying
 
Any word from the POA Georgia and North Carolina peeps? I've seen pics of an airport near Ashville that was completely flooded, hangars having 8'-10' of water.
 
Half Fast said:
Any word from the POA Georgia and North Carolina peeps? I've seen pics of an airport near Ashville that was completely flooded, hangars having 8'-10' of water.
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It seems like the mountains around Asheville, Boone, etc got crushed pretty bad. Several local fields flooded as well but not as bad as western nc. I still haven’t been to mine.
 
eman1200 said:
It seems like the mountains around Asheville, Boone, etc got crushed pretty bad. Several local fields flooded as well but not as bad as western nc. I still haven’t been to mine.
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Do you know if yours flooded?

One of the Beech Aero Club guys says his hangar had 10’ of water. Every plane on his field is likely totaled. Insurance companies are going to be writing a lot of big checks. (And then so will we.)
 
Half Fast said:
Any word from the POA Georgia and North Carolina peeps? I've seen pics of an airport near Ashville that was completely flooded, hangars having 8'-10' of water.
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No major concerns in the Atlanta area or NW Georgia. We had several inches of rain and <30 mph winds, so not that much worse than a big line of thunderstorms. The storm went East of Atlanta, so that's where any bigger damage happened.
 
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kyleb said:
No major concerns in the Atlanta area or NW Georgia. We had several inches of rain and <30 mph winds, so not that much worse than a big line of thunderstorms. The storm went East of Atlanta, so that's where any bigger damage happened.
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Not much first hand but we (CAP) tried to fly to Asheville Saturday afternoon for a photo mission. No power for ATC at Asheville, so the airport was Class-E with Atlanta coordinating one flight at a time in, relays from other aircraft. Solid overcast, we got vectored around for business jets in front of us, finally did an rnav into asheville, saw ceilings at 2000 over the airport with scud hanging down and higher terrain around us. That was a solid nope and it was getting too dark at that point.

It looked to me like flooding is receding compared to earlier pictures, but the damage from it will take months if not years to fix. There are roads washed out, bridges gone and entire areas that are uninhabitable.

American and Delta are intending to start flying there again tomorrow. No gasoline to be had, no car rental, taxi, or Uber is available. Plan ahead.

If you are looking for a charity, I always recommend Mercury One. They have a solid fund raiser every year for operating expenses, so 100% of donations go into what they're donated for.
 
Half Fast said:
How'd it turn out?
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good and really bad. good as in no damage at my airport at all that I could see. really bad as in my alternator is shot and I can't fly any relief flights and it's really bumming me out. the one time in my life I can actually be of some help, this sht happens. scheduled to have the work done this saturday, depending on what excuse my mechanic comes up with this time.
 
eman1200 said:
good and really bad. good as in no damage at my airport at all that I could see. really bad as in my alternator is shot and I can't fly any relief flights and it's really bumming me out. the one time in my life I can actually be of some help, this sht happens. scheduled to have the work done this saturday, depending on what excuse my mechanic comes up with this time.
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C'est la general aviation. I'm waiting on a couple of little o-rings for my primer that have been stuck in Atlanta for about a week.

Glad to hear your airport and plane are okay. Pics I've seen from Ashville, Boone, Chimney Rock, Banner Elk, etc., look freakin' awful.
 
Half Fast said:
C'est la general aviation. I'm waiting on a couple of little o-rings for my primer that have been stuck in Atlanta for about a week.

Glad to hear your airport and plane are okay. Pics I've seen from Ashville, Boone, Chimney Rock, Banner Elk, etc., look freakin' awful.
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they got hammered over there. the relief efforts I've seen from the GA community has been unbelievable.
 
eman1200 said:
they got hammered over there. the relief efforts I've seen from the GA community has been unbelievable.
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Good to know. I heard a rumor that they were planning to arrest all the volunteer pilots....
 
Half Fast said:
Good to know. I heard a rumor that they were planning to arrest all the volunteer pilots....
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well I have to admit, along with some amazing work, there was also quite a bit of questionable shtuff going on at the same time. it got difficult to sort thru the good from the noise, but overall fantastic. minus me, who was not fantastic. in my defense, I was down in florida when the hurricane rolled thru there, although on the southeast coast, but it was still, um, exciting.
 
Another one inbound, with Tampa Bay square in the crosshairs. A direct hit would do massive damage. A lot of people on the barrier islands are still recovering from Helene. I knew several people who lost their homes.
Expect plenty of coverage on the worst case scenario, which is landfall just north of the bay with the right eyewall on the mouth of the bay at high tide. That would be Godzilla-level destruction.
Our airfield is not near the water, but most of the hangars are old. I doubt it would survive a direct hit. We talked about relocating some of the aircraft, but what are we going to do, leave our families here while we save our planes? So I think we just have to take our chances and rely on insurance.
 
Son in law evacuated his plane from FXE for one hurricane. Challenger 601
 
Ed Haywood said:
Another one inbound, with Tampa Bay square in the crosshairs. A direct hit would do massive damage. A lot of people on the barrier islands are still recovering from Helene. I knew several people who lost their homes.
Expect plenty of coverage on the worst case scenario, which is landfall just north of the bay with the right eyewall on the mouth of the bay at high tide. That would be Godzilla-level destruction.
Our airfield is not near the water, but most of the hangars are old. I doubt it would survive a direct hit. We talked about relocating some of the aircraft, but what are we going to do, leave our families here while we save our planes? So I think we just have to take our chances and rely on insurance.
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You could be relocating today or tomorrow, with a small group of 4, you could relocate 3 planes at a time (move them to Fort Pierce, they have the hangar space after building a bunch of new hangers).
 
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