CPT Twit - Reporting from Hurricane Joaquin Part 2. - Potomac River Tidal Basin - Coltons Point, Maryland

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Remember the monster hurricane about to destroy the east coast of the USA last Friday?

Remember the spaghetti chart showing all the possible places it could hit the USA?

 
Well here is where it went after all the people on the east coast were scared to death with dire predictions of the fury of the storm.  Not to Washington DC, not New York City, nor Philadelphia, Baltimore, Norfolk or even Hilton Head, but to London as in England did this wayward hurricane   go racing across the sea, exactly the opposite direction from the spaghetti charts we saw all week.

By my count that is about the 20th time the weather service people caught the attention and ratings of the unsuspecting public with emergency bulletins of a monster historic storm headed our way.  Only twice in the past ten years have such storms even hit here, Katrina and Sandy, both of which cost a huge amount of money and lives.

Yet every few weeks the weather stations decide they need to capture the television ratings so they pick out a storm to feature and promise it will wreak destruction for the next year.  Of course, the warning continues until all the stores have sold out their emergency supplies when miraculously, just like Joaquin this past weekend, the storm vanishes and people are left with thousands of dollars in emergency supplies and food.

Do you think it is an accident, or coincidence?

Remember, all those stores selling out their merchandise are advertisers on the very channels predicting the storm.  The worse the prediction, the more money the station gets in revenue.

I would suggest a Congressional investigation of whether there are conflicts of interest in this false storm hype that financially benefits the storm channels, but then nothing would ever get done.

After billions of dollars spent on super computers and high tech equipment and new weather equipment and jet planes to chase the storms, my grandfather sitting on his front porch had a far better result in predicting storms.

Add weather reporting to the professions with the worst reputation, they earned it.

Of course one of the 12 states that were supposed to be paralyzed did get it bad, South Carolina, but not from the wayward hurricane but from being trapped between a High and Low weather pattern leaving parts of the state with 27 inches or more of rain.  In fact, more rain fell in 48 hours than the state usually gets in one year.

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Reporting from Hurricane Joaquin - Potomac River Tidal Basin - Coltons Point, Maryland

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How often do I get a chance to show you where Coltons Point is located? Never.  Of course I do write about St. Clement's Island which is a few hundred feet out in the water from Coltons Point and it was the site of the pilgrim landing in 1634.

Once the settlers decided the Indians lining the shore and watching them were not hostile, they moved from the island to the shore and St. Clement's Manor was formed.  At the time the Manor territory included Washington, D.C. to Philadelphia and reached well into New Jersey.

All you need to remember is that Coltons Point is the oldest continuously occupied chartered community in the continental United States, we have now been here for 381 years.  Of course Jamestown, Virginia (1608) and Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts (1620) were the first two landings of pilgrims but neither settlement survived through the end of the 1600's, just Colton Point.

So I moved down here about a dozen years ago to write books since there is nothing else to do here and this weekend I will be celebrating my fourth hurricane in the Potomac Tidal basin.  I came from landlocked Iowa and I have a lot of friends back in Iowa and Nebraska so I thought I would give you a running account of the impact of Hurricane Joaquin.

As you can see from the maps, we are just up river from the point where the Potomac River hits the Chesapeake Bay.  For a frame of reference, you should know the Potomac is up to seven miles wide at this point, and over 100 feet deep.

My house sits between the River and a small inlet, or bay, less than 100 feet from the water either way.  From my porch I can see both bodies of water and from the second floor I can see much more of the river.

St. Clement's Island in horizon

As part of the tidal basin, we get ocean tides all the way up past Washington, D.C., which is about 65 miles by water up river.  Here in the Point it is common to get 4 foot tides daily. However, two days ago the weather in the ocean began pushing the water up the bay and river and today all the docks here are underwater, and we still have 72 hours of storms ahead of us.

St. Clement's Lighthouse and Cross

My intent is to file reports as long as the weather allows.  Winds are one problem here since all electric lines are above water.  Flooding is not so big a problem since the river is just a few hundred feet away and no one in their right mind has a place with a basement.  You see, we are only about 5-10 feet above sea level.

A typical hurricane will flood the roads coming to Coltons Point, and cut off access from where I live to the north and south ends of the community, isolating a handful of houses into a temporary island. Water saturation or tress falling generally take out the electric, cable and phone lines leaving us pretty much unable to communicate or get out.

If the eye of the hurricane remains far enough offshore we may not get the high winds, which have been over 100 MPH in the earlier storms.  Trees can still fall if their roots are underwater for a long period of time.  The surrounding area from Frederickburg, Virginia to Annapolis have already received over 6 inches of rain with major flooding so we can expect the runoff from up the river.

So that is the situation and I will be posting occasional updates as long as we have electric power.
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