The After Matth(ew)

What a weekend it was.  As you might have seen all over the news, Hurricane Matthew came roaring up the Southeast coast this weekend, which has made for quite a few days over the last week.  I actually stayed home from work sick on Tuesday after my birthday on Monday, and by the afternoon, my office decided that it was closing for the rest of the week.  It was actually a really weird waiting period because the storm was only moving 12-13 miles per hour.  We had so many days to prepare, and as people started evacuating on Tuesday (1.1 million people were under evacuation order - including us), we glued ourselves to the television and watched it hit Haiti, Cuba, and start towards The Bahamas.  By Thursday, we were so stir crazy.  Our hurricane shutters we up, so there was no natural light or fresh air coming inside, and we needed to do something.  Erika felt the same way, so we all headed down to the ghost town peninsula to check out all the prep.  I took all of these pictures of Charleston about 24 hours before the storm hit, and as you can see, it was a little eery.

We walked just over 2 miles along Rainbow Row, the Battery, and South of Broad, and surprisingly found one business, Carmella's dessert and wine bar, still open.  We refueled and walked close to another 2 miles, up to Calhoun Street, before heading our separate ways.  As of that time on Thursday, we thought that the hurricane would make landfall in Florida, but when it only skirted the coast on Friday morning and looked like a Category 3 hurricane would be making a direct hit in Charleston, we packed our bags (and the cats) and headed to Erika's house, about 30 minutes inland from here.  We are less than a mile from the Stono River, and according to storm surge maps, we could have been flooded in for days or weeks.  Luckily, it dropped down to a Cat 2 storm and hit during low tide, so there was not the same destruction there could have been.  Regardless, we got to have a fun overnight with our friends... I think the cats enjoyed it more than we (or Erika's cat) did.  

I am happy to report that the power is coming back, the waters are receding, curfews are over, and it looks like the state will be returning to a more normal schedule beginning tomorrow.  I could not be more thankful to our friends for taking us (and the cats!) in as we lived through our first hurricane as South Carolinians.

Linking up with Biana for Weekending today.