Bonnie

10:50 AM, Tuesday morning. Bonnie: All Day Long...

We are in the middle of packing -- according to the Weather Channel there is a mandatory evacuation in effect for the Outer Banks. Hurricane Bonnie is heading this way.

The day is beautiful, warm and bright. The ocean is a bit rough but not too bad yet. Scattered folks are still on the beach, walking, sunbathing, surfing. We are paid up until Sunday so it sucks royally that we have to bail now.

Gotta look at it as an adventure, though.

11:38 AM. It is still oddly nice here. Not much happening: a few sirens, helicopters floating by for the news stations, lots of packed cars heading North -- not many going South. The surf is a bit more foamy, active.

All-in-all, though, it’s a pretty day.

12:06 PM. Haze to the North and South. The wind has picked-up and chilled somewhat. Fewer people are on the beach -- one woman and her children are sunbathing nearby, though. The surf is constant but not very high. It’s still sunny, more-or-less.

We are almost completely packed.

1:05 PM. Mandatory evacuations are in effect all up and down the Outer Banks. We’ve cleaned up the beach house, brought in all the beach furniture and packed our own stuff. The beaches are considerably emptier now. Winds are stronger but the skies are still fairly sunny. The ocean looks brown -- like foam-topped chocolate milk.

You can hear people hammering nails, boarding up. Bonnie is supposed to hit Cape Hatteras this afternoon. This part of the Outer Banks is supposed to get hurricane-strength winds by midnight. It’s all a lot of guesswork, however.

We have hotel reservations in Richmond.

1:53 PM. We are on the road, heading out of the Outer Banks. Big Traffic and swamped gas stations. This might take a while...

2:22 PM. Crap. I just remembered that I left my hat back in the cottage...

Two long lines of traffic leading out of the Outer Banks; lots of taped and/or boarded up windows along the way. Even though the sky is getting milky white with clouds, it is still nicely bright here...

3:42 PM. Still on the road. Can you say, "traffic"?

A young woman is hanging out of her jeep, snapping pictures of the lined-up vehicles. If I had a dollar for every SUV I’d have, um...a lot of dollars.

At this point along the route it is sunny. Pretty. A perfect day for lounging at the beach, wouldn’t you know?

I’ve never evacuated before and the experience is (not to put too fine a point on it) boring...

4:15 PM. Some people are downright nasty it seems. A guy crossing the road almost got run over a while back and there has been some very pissy driving going on.

Now they are predicting gale force winds in Cape Hatteras tonight and hurricane force winds by daybreak. Heard on the radio that 200,000 people are leaving this area.

All-in-all, I’d rather be sitting on the beach drinking a Corona.

5:54 PM. Still evacuating...

After a while you start to recognize folks in some of the cars you pass.

The most recent predictions place landfall for the hurricane a little West of Cape Hatteras.

7:53 PM. At the Holiday Inn in Richmond, VA.

Consider us evacuated.

I’m sort of hungry...

11:49 PM. It’s been a long day and I miss the beach. I hope we can go back and enjoy the rest of our week but I sort of doubt that we will get that chance.

Here’s wishing the Outer Banks good luck with the hurricane.

I’m going to catch some zees...

--- JWR, 8/25/98