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We are a family of four in CT. Hub and I are in the beginning stages of researching potential places to relocate to, farther south. We are considering the Triangle area of NC.
One thing we hope to get a better sense of is the hurricane and tornado factor. Would you guys be able to give me some insider info as to things like frequency, duration, severity, damage, effects of hurricanes and tornadoes in the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area? And, how this area compares, say to the NC coast?.. To Florida?
Also, can anyone point me towards a good resource/link for this kind of info?
Nice to hear from someone from around these parts, who is on the way to the Triangle area. May I ask for you to share a little more about you and your move? (Are you from the Northeast? How did you come to decide on a move to NC triangle area? Do you have children? Are you buying a home..? Have you been to the area? How often...? Do you/a partner have work lined up there? How long did it take to find work..?)
I've only begun to look into this, but I don't think that CT comes close to NC in the number of hurricanes or tornadoes. Am still digging... But yeah, I'm SO not looking forward to the blizzard that's on its way here!
Tornadoes are exceedingly rare here. Been here 18 years and only heard of one real serious incident in the area. I don't think there were any deaths, just some houses damaged.
Hurricanes have trouble making it this far inland, and if they do they are typically weakened. Fran was the last major storm to cause serious issues and that was in '96 I believe. The coastal regions have more to fear from them than we here in the central part of the state do.
Overall the weather is quite reasonable. We have seasons but not too badly. Winter is short and generally pleasant - most days are bright blue skies and sunny so despite it possibly being very cold, it's cheerful. Spring and fall are sublime, and summer is mostly great except for some days when it's hazy and hot/humid with temps near or over 100, but that's why our forefathers invented swimming pools and fans.
Have lived here since 1986. An F4 tornado missed our house by three blocks in 1988. Slight damage, moderate inconvenience because of debris clean-up. Hurricane 1996, eye passed directly overhead but peak wind gusts had already dropped to 80 mph. Slight damage, heavy inconvenience because of power outage. Hurricane 1999, no damage, moderate inconvenience because of power outage. That's it. One lightning strike that blew up an oak tree in the yard.
No earthquake, no flood unless you live in a low-lying area or near a stormwater retention pond/lake.
Leave your snow blower behind but every three-to-five years there will be a significant ice/sleet storm. By northern standards we have had only two significant snowfalls (12 inches or more) since 1986.
I'm living here eight years and we had one potential hurricane event which petered out long before it ever became a threat. There have been a few tornado events, one which apparently came within a mile or so of my house in North Raleigh, and there are at least occasional related warnings (thankfully our mobile carriers now alert us to the threat).
But generally speaking, the weather in the Triangle is mostly about the intense heat in the Summer. People will also lump in the humidity, but having spent the first forty three years of my life in and around NYC and having had to ride the subway on those awful hazy, hot and humid days, it ain't nuthin'. And you adjust to the heat fairly quickly.
Nice to hear from someone from around these parts, who is on the way to the Triangle area. May I ask for you to share a little more about you and your move? (Are you from the Northeast? How did you come to decide on a move to NC triangle area? Do you have children? Are you buying a home..? Have you been to the area? How often...? Do you/a partner have work lined up there? How long did it take to find work..?)
I've only begun to look into this, but I don't think that CT comes close to NC in the number of hurricanes or tornadoes. Am still digging... But yeah, I'm SO not looking forward to the blizzard that's on its way here!
We are from the New Haven area. About 3 years ago me and my wife looked at relocating and Cary/Raleigh area was always in the top cities to raise a family, etc;. and different climate from Northeast. We visited the area 3 years ago for an in-person interview I had with the company. Didn't get the job then, but they reached out a month ago and I got the job this time. We have 1 infant kid, and we aren't buying a home...renting first to get used to all the areas.
We moved here in 2009 (from Silicon Valley) and while we had the occasional freak small twister, this was our first serious experience with really dangerous weather.
...Thirty confirmed tornadoes occurred in North Carolina on 16 April 2011, the greatest one-day total for North Carolina on record...
...A total of 24 individuals lost their lives in North Carolina with thirteen tornadoes classified as strong, some hitting highly-populated areas...
We were in our basements in our neighborhood in central Raleigh, then it veered away and hit the mobile homes where the casualties in Raleigh occurred. WRAL staff evacuated downstairs, even their on air staff. Tornadoes really do sound like a train or thunder that doesn't stop.
Can you tell the event affected me?
And, the lightning storms are something else... Fun to watch from a safe place, but once there was a strike on a pole nearby and several of us on our street had electronics damaged, the surge came over the cable/phone lines, so a couple of computers, TVs, and for us the network card on our printer and our modem/router were fried. We have a whole-house surge protector now, which isn't a guarantee this won't happen again but it will help.
Having said that, the snow here, while still a great novelty for me, will seem like nothing to you, I'm sure.
We don't plan on moving soon, we really like it here anyway.
For basic info I suggest the State Climate Office of NC: http://www.nc-climate.ncsu.edu/. Under "Aspects of Climate" look at the pages for "hurricanes" and "thunderstorms." I'm on an old iPad so it's a pain to copy and paste, but you should find the "tornadoes by the numbers" chart to get a breakdown of reported tornadoes by strength and month of occurrence.
For what that means in terms of comparing to other regions of the country, check out the tornado vulnerability presentation on the Southeast Regional Climate Center's site: http://www.sercc.com/Konrad_trends_t...lity_2014.pptx.
For hurricanes the biggest killer and most widespread damage comes from storm surge and depending on rainfall, storm size, and storm speed, inland flooding (Google Floyd in 1999). Impacts inland are less frequent than on the coast, though it does happen. Hazel, Fran... Further inland Hugo beat up Charlotte a bit. Generally make sure you've got a well constructed house with good condition roof, get a NOAA weather radio to supplement phone (in case phone is out of battery or there are network issues), and consider flood insurance even if not required by your lender (almost 25% of flood damage happens outside of mapped flood risk areas!) and it will be fine. As others suggested, every place comes with risks. Speaking of which, good luck with the snow storm!
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Don't forget about April 2011...
