Gonna have a breeze

[Mackin USA]

SOME of y'all who attended CoreCon in Wilmington may have traveled I-40 from Raleigh

NOT an easy drive today!

ADDED
https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2018/09/14/what-is-the-waffle-house-index

[Mackin USA]

COOL MAP from Ruth Ann

https://fiman.nc.gov/fiman/Map.aspx

[ergophobe]

I-40 from Raleigh

The chicken coops or whatever that is make me wonder what the evacuation plan is for animals. Here we have evac centers for cattle and horses during fires, but typically people only need to trailer them 10-20 miles, which is bad enough. What do farmers do there during an event like this?

[rcjordan]

>animals

HHH! EG, this is NC. We slaughter more animals in a day than Cali wants to hear about.  Last I heard, there were 5 million pigs here (roughly the same as the population of Denmark).  Many, if not most, of those are located in the devastated area.

Teasing aside, on the coast (particularly where many of the industrial farms are located) there is no reasonably nearby high ground. We are dead flat.  Ever been to Netherlands and been to the bottom lands there? That felt like home to me.

[rcjordan]

<added>

Update: now 9 million pigs

What's Worse Than Floodwater? Contaminated Floodwater With Dead Pigs Floating in It.

https://www.indyweek.com/news/archives/2018/09/14/whats-worse-than-floodwater-contaminated-floodwater-with-dead-pigs-floating-in-it

The bloated carcasses of hundreds of thousands of hogs, chickens and other drowned livestock bobbed in a nose-stinging soup of fecal matter, pesticides, fertilizer and gasoline so toxic that fish flopped helplessly on the surface to escape it. Rescue workers smeared Vick's Vapo-Rub under their noses to try to numb their senses against the stench.

Florence is forecast to make landfall in the same region as a much stronger storm.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hurricane-florence-flood-hog-manure-pits-coal-ash-dumps-north-carolina/


Oh RC, nowhere is as flat as you say!

See below. Current drone photo.

[ergophobe]

EG, this is NC. We slaughter more animals in a day than Cali wants to hear about.   Last I heard, there were 5 million pigs here

Perhaps so, but California has over 5 million cattle to NC's 800,000 and this is rangeland around here. So there's a lot of cattle to move here during a fire. I expect the feedlots don't have an issue, because everything around a feedlot is dead.

Teasing aside, on the coast (particularly where many of the industrial farms are located) there is no reasonably nearby high ground.

Right, so what do they do? In that photo, the barns or coops or whatever they were were underwater. Do farmers just lose all their animals or is there an evacuation plan for the animals. I just ask, because that's always part of the evac here. Otherwise, farmers could be ruined.

[rcjordan]

Millions of chickens drown in Florence floodwaters, manure pits damaged | Reuters

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-storm-florence-food/millions-of-chickens-drown-in-florence-floodwaters-manure-pits-damaged-idUSKCN1LX2J2

>cattle

You can herd cattle. Pigs & chickens  ...not so much.

You pose a good question.  I'm pretty sure that they just take the loss, but that's just based on what I *haven't* seen or heard over the years.  I'm modestly familiar with industrial poultry farms (friends with one owner) and I'm pretty sure there is nothing they can do to gather & move 50,000+ birds.

BTW, the Smithfield/Gwaltney plant near the place where I-95 is currently flooded slaughters 30,000 hogs per day. Hyde county, which is pictured in that flatland photo above, has one egg farm that produces 2 million+ eggs per day. This gives an idea of the mind-boggling scale of these operations.

[grnidone]

RC:  where are you staying right now?

[rcjordan]

I'm at home and stayed here as the storm passed.  The top northeast corner of NC was only slightly affected with minor flooding. Wind damage was very sparse here, too.  Yesterday, for a medical appointment, I drove about 70 miles southwest to the very edge of the hard-hit area (Washington, NC mentioned somewhere above) without any problems, but from that point south and inland all hell has broken loose.

<added>
That flooded farm pictured above is 45 miles due south of my house.

[rcjordan]

>good question

Found something re pigs.

The N.C. Pork Council says some hogs also may have died when farms flooded, but that mortality figures are not yet available. The pork industry trade group says farmers have been working before and after the storm to move at-risk animals to higher ground. The industry lost about 2,800 hogs during flooding from Hurricane Matthew in 2016.

1.7 Million Chickens Drown as NC Rivers Swollen by Florence
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/north-carolina/articles/2018-09-18/17-million-chickens-drown-as-nc-rivers-swollen-by-florence

In another article, there was one sentence saying that the state had been working with farms since Matthew to better build/prepare for floods.  It may not be related to that revised building code, but I've noticed in several photos that the hog parlors are built on a berm, giving them an additional 2 or 3 feet of elevation. When the surrounding area is low, 3 feet might just be enough in most cases.

>1.7 Million Chickens

Chickens, OTOH....

[ergophobe]

OK... so hogs get roughly the treatment cattle get here, but chickens are luckier.

[rcjordan]

This just in:

Florence kills 3.4 million chickens, 5,500 pigs in NC. The numbers are expected to rise.
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article218610365.html

[rcjordan]

Preliminary Hurricane Florence NC rainfall totals

[rcjordan]

>Camille

See what I mean?

I'm tired of hearing about how the coast is so at risk from hurricanes when the most widespread, costliest damage is in the interior.

[littleman]

Hurricane Michael is so bad that Waffle House has already closed 18 restaurants!