A closer look at Hurricane Earl

We only spent 3 days at the ocean this year and each day was red flag, meaning it is both illegal and too dangerous to get in the water because of rip currents or choppy waters. This was as much surfing as we did this year:


The water and waves were much bigger as you can imagine with a hurricane in the distance. We're talking pacific, surfing waves that are very uncommon in the atlanic. I've never seen any so large in my 20+ years of visiting the Outer Banks. We still enjoyed the waves coming up the beach and the kids still had a great time.






Our friend Jenny and her three little ones joined us late Monday afternoon and left very early Thursday morning because of the storm. Even though their trip was cut a little short and ended on a stressful, worrisome note I think the girls, Jenny and Mark had a good time overall!







As I said in my biking/helmet post, I am a worrisome first time parent but I certainly don't go to extremes like some first time moms. I think it is because I'm just more laid back and Autumn has a grandpa that does all the worrying for me. Case in point:



Here is my mom and Autumn getting ready to hop on their bike and ride back to the house so Autumn could go down for a nap...



...and here is my Dad not far behind, making sure Autumn would be properly secured and protected in the bike. He wasn't quite certain my mom could handle this on her own. Seeing as how she's only had 5 kids you know. We love our Grandpa!

So these next images were taken Thursday evening around 7PM long after visitors had been asked to evacuate. The beach was a bit of a ghost town. The wind was unbelievable as you got closer and closer to the water. The waves again were the choppiest, largest and most far out I have even seen them. There was so much moisture and sand blowing in the air from the high winds that you just felt so gross when you got back into the car. My images got less and less clear as my camera took a beating the longer we stayed.




In just a few hours (around 10PM the rain began) Earl would hit. Most of the homes on the water were boarded up. Had we been at our beach house in June (about 3 lots from the ocean) we would have surely left, but luckily we were across the main road and back towards the sound (water between island and mainland).





Check out the grass below in this picture - just to help illustrate how much the wind was blowing, this grass usually falls lifeless and flat while here it is completely pushed back into the dunes.





Diego and Anthony who appears to be ready to fight the storm or something...



My gorgeous sister Jodi, helping show off the power of the wind and her awesome tan line.


As we left there were a few more people (mostly residents of the area) with cameras trying to get a glimpse of the calm before the storm. It was such a neat experience to be part of and luckily no one was hurt or the storm wasn't more powerful. We were so glad we stayed as we had 2 more awesome days at the beach with sun, cool weather and loads more memories to make. Here's to maybe a tornado or earthquake next year!

2 comments

  1. Yeah, Earl didn't amount to much. We didn't even get any rain here, and we can usually at least count on the hurricanes to water the grass a little. =)

    Love the picture of Anthony ready to take on the storm.

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  2. It certainly made for an interesting trip. I think all that's left is the earthquake. We had the tornado the year Christian was born.

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