News Flash: Irene Is Raging

First an earthquake and now a hurricane, the east coast is getting a real battering from Mother Nature this week. No sooner had the excitement of the earthquake abated but serious weather warnings and talk of evacuating coastal regions of South Carolina became the new topic of conversation. Hurricane Irene was approaching and was heading right for us.

Yet it would seem that luck (for us anyway) was on our side as Irene has narrowly missed South Carolina and headed north, hugging the North Carolinian coast. The city of Charlotte, a mere 2 hours from Columbia, has experienced severe flooding and seen the first three victims of this raging storm which occurred due to falling debris. North Carolinas outer banks have been greatly affected by 8ft storm surges which have flooded most of the low lying banks.

With a hurricane so close by there has definitely been a change of weather here in Columbia, the blazing summer heat has been dramatically softened by cloud cover and although no rainfall there has been a swift wind filling the air. The only real physical sign has been the clouds over head racing by at an unbelievable speed. It is hard to imagine the destruction being caused so close by.

It was a close call but thankfully here at USC we have not been affected by the weather. I sincerely hope Irene begins to lose momentum before destroying anymore cities in her path.

It is safe to say that nature has definitely welcomed me to the States and reminded me that we may complain about the rain in England but at least we don’t have to contend with super storms and seismic activity!

I am clearly not in England anymore!

News stories covering Irene s destruction:
http://hamptonroads.com/2011/08/saturday-morning-reports-hurricane-irene-va-nc
http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/08/27/tropical.weather/index.html?iref=BN1