Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Category 1? That's barely anything.
Hurricane Isabel did significant damage to this area in 2003, and passed over the DC metro area
*as a tropical storm*. We lost power for a week, and had to carry groceries up 16 flights of stairs. Someone died at UMD, where I was a grad student at the time. More than a million Marylanders lost power and there was significant beach erosion and property damage.
Ophelia, even if it strengthens to category 1, is not predicted to have the wind span or wind speed of Isabel, so we should not sustain the damage we did 10 years ago. Furthermore, a lot of pruning has happened since then and we don't have quite the tree canopy we had at the time. We're in a drought, so there shouldn't be widespread flooding except in coastal areas.
However, everyone should be aware of possible downed trees, power outages or flash flooding in our region tomorrow and Sunday.