6 replies to this topic

[Kirek]

The Atlanta Astronomy Club 2024 PeachState Star Gaze kicks off on September 29th. It's held at DAV, close to Sharon, GA. A location built for astronomers. This is also the 30th year of PSSG!

 

We have a great lineup of speakers for Saturday,  October 5th, including Pranvera Hyseni from Astronomy Outreach of Kosovo.

 

You can register here:
https://atlantaastro...egistration.php

 

 

[BarrySimon615]

I am really surprised that there has been no announcement here about how the Deerlick Astronomy Village made it thru the recent Hurricane Helene, nor have there been any inquiry about this from those that have registered.  So how did you guys do?  From what I see on the news areas further north such as Asheville, NC were really hit hard.

 

Barry Simon

[bunyon]

I would guess they're fine. That's pretty far east. The NC damage is almost exclusively flooding, which was a result of lots of rain in the week prior to the storm, and the water being funneled into the valleys where the towns are. The towns are all (well, mostly) built on riverbanks in relatively narrow valleys. There wasn't much, if any, wind damage here. So if you didn't flood, you're fine. Even in NC it's incredible hold narrow the band of destruction is.

[Napp]

I drove up from Florida via I-95, I-16 and US-1.  From Savannah on to Deerlick Astronomy Village there were a very few major truck stops with generators that were open and pumping gas.  Each had long lines of folks filling gas cans.  Everything else was closed and all traffic signals were dark.  There appeared to be no power anywhere until I got to I-20 where a few places were open.  Cellular is mostly down.  I was very glad to have my Garmin as the gps apps were nonfunctional.  A lot of trees had fallen.  Crews had just cut off the portions intruding into the traffic lanes and thrown them off the road.  The field is in fine shape.  There is no power so generators are being used to power water and WiFi.  Georgia Power says we will have electricity restored Friday.  Lot of trees are down in the surrounding woods.  The town of Washington has open gas stations and a few stores.  Last night the sky was frustrating.  I’m working the H400.  I got a few targets between cloud bands moving through.  Tonight is looking great.  

[bunyon]

I saw a better map of power outages and hadn't realized that eastern GA was hit harder than western - the reverse of NC. So, my comment above is most likely incorrect. Glad to hear there doesn't seem to be much physical damage. 

[Napp]

I saw a better map of power outages and hadn't realized that eastern GA was hit harder than western - the reverse of NC. So, my comment above is most likely incorrect. Glad to hear there doesn't seem to be much physical damage. 

The forecast for the storm was to move over Tallahassee and then up close to the GA-AL border.  However, it moved east and made landfall ear Keaton Beach and then went up through Georgia east of the predicted track.  The strongest part of a hurricane  other than the eyewall is the northeast quadrant so eastern Georgia got the wind.  By the time it got over the mountains it was just a tropical storm dumping rain.

[KGoodwin]

I have an observatory there, so here is the situation at DAV:

 

- Power is still out and is expected to be out until at least Thursday.

- Physical damage was minimal.  I don't know of any structure damage.

- There was a ton of rain, and there are areas of DAV where drainage is not great, but no major flooding issues that I'm aware of.

- PSSG is ongoing, but attendance seems very low compared to previous years based on Grier's Field camera images, I expect both because a lot of potential attendees were impacted by the storm and because there is no power.

- There were a lot of trees and power lines and other obstacles to driving in areas near DAV immediately after the storm, but I don't know the current situation.

- Just east of DAV, in the Augusta area, got hit extremely hard with many tornadoes etc. and several friends of mine in that direction lost their houses or suffered major damage.

 

The storm center tracked essentially right over DAV, but the worst of the storms and heaviest rains were to the east of the storm center.  The storm had unraveled quite a bit by the time it got that far inland and what remained of the eye wall had moved to the east side of the storm.  The storm then started a NW turn which brought that section of the storm around on the north side which is what hit western North Carolina the following day and caused much destruction there from catastrophic flooding.