HANNA SCHMANNA

It’s very difficult to argue with local knowledge of the weather and the waters. It’s also difficult to argue with the Weather Channel, NOAA and, on occasion, The Farmers Almanac. And, when all of the aforementioned agree with each other, THEN you’d darn well better listen. Consequentially, we are sitting in the York River Yacht Haven, safe and sound, having survived tropical Storm Hanna without so much as a scratch



Friday night, when we returned from taking care of Gordon’s computer, we rechecked all of the lines on the boat. Gordon doubled up most of the lines, so that if any one failed, there’d be a backup. That being done, we went to bed and waited for the storm.

When Saturday morning arrived, the weather had definitely changed. We had gone to sleep with clear skies, no wind and the waters like glass and woke up to heavy clouds, 17 to 20 mph offshore winds and 3-foot choppy seas out on the York River.

We got up, got dressed, rechecked the lines and turned on the weather channel to watch Hanna’s advance up the East Coast. We were fairly unnerved, as all of the TV reports and radio broadcasts said we’d have winds in the 50 to 60 mph range. So, as the storm rolled ever closer, we became more and more apprehensive.


Finally, around 11:00 am, the storm hit. It began with bands of rain that blew out of the south and came down so hard that anything beyond 30 feet away was invisible. This lasted for about an hour and then the wind blew without any rain at all. It maintained a steady speed of 25 mph with periodic gusts of 45 mph, but nothing greater. The winds lasted for another hour or so and then it all just quit! I mean zilch, zip, nothing!!! Except for the cloudy sky, it was as if it had never happened. Gordon and I waited for about another thirty minutes and, at 1:30 pm, got in the car and headed out to check for any area damage.

We were really surprised at how many people were out on the roads. It was no different than if we had gone through a summer thunderstorm and people were going about their business as usual.
Oh yeah, there were occasional branches down on the roads and the local power company trucks were out resetting fuses in the electrical lines, but that was the only sign there had been a major storm through here. We ended up stopping at a Poppa John’s, got a pizza and then went back to the boat around 5:00 pm and with that, our tropical storm adventure was over (and we’re not complaining one little bit about the ending!)