I'm glad to hear Smoking Pipes didn't get trashed by Ian, and now I hope flooding doesn't sneak up on them either. Right now, nearing noon on Saturday, Ian is tracking very close to Dr. Grabow in Sparta, N.C., so I am hoping they are spared flooding. I believe Dr. Grabow is our largest remaining U.S. briar pipe maker by volume. Heavy rain in and around the mountains can be fierce.
A few years ago, Dr. Grabow was hit by a rare North Carolina earthquake that dislodged some of the pipe making factory's machinery, though they put it back together and were in production within weeks, if I recall correctly.
In central N.C., our power went out yesterday, Friday, about 4 p.m. I believed the power company's robot phone bank and assumed it affected only 38 households, but that was only our particular outage. When I went out for take-out food, I soon discovered the highways were strewn with debris and limbs from trees, and several of the bigger complicated intersection traffic lights were out of operation. So, all the way from Ft. Myers, Florida, that monster was/is still churning, and the flooding problems will go on for some days yet, and the rebuild in Florida for months and years. The sirens were sounding all over town last night here in N.C. Still no phone service to Ft. Myers.