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I'm an online retailer, interested in moving to Charlotte area.
I would like to know how often power outages occur on average,
and how long are the outages?
I would also like to know, how severe are the tornadoes?
Or is it more of an issue in tornado alley?
I'm trying to decide between Virginia and North Carolina.
Which would you recommend if keeping power for home based business is my biggest concern?
Virginia seems like the second best choice, in terms of moderate climate.
But I like the advanced and plentiful services, grocery delivery, mobile medical, in North Carolina.
I've been on the west coast my whole life.
I visited Ft Lauderdale during a hurricane once, and it was not so bad.
So I'm familiar with the tropical storms.
I would like to read your view on storms, tornadoes, emergency situations if any, living without light/heat if ever, how rapidly power is recovered, etc.
^The power grid in Charlotte never fails. This is the home of Duke Energy and the city is literally surrounded by power plants that generate power for a large area in the SE. What will happen is the occasional ice storm (maybe once every 5 years or so) or random summer storm will cause a local power line to fall. This can be mitigated of course by locating where this isn't an issue. i.le areas where local power is buried.
Charlotte is not in tornado alley but like most of the SE can be affected by rough weather in the summer. It's mostly thunderstorms but these can spawn tornadoes. The bigger issue facing your move to the SE are hurricanes. They can be quite disruptive and are very unpredictable. Charlotte is far enough inland where it's not usually an issue, but hurricane Hugo did hit the city in 1989 and knocked out power for throughout 95% of the city. Some people were without it for weeks. This is very rare however.
If power is a huge issue for you, then you can always install a natural gas generator for backup.
frewroad, Thank you so much for your extremely helpful information and clearing up my misconceptions.
I feel more confidant and comfortable about making the move to Charlotte.
I've been here almost 3 years and I can only remember 1 power outage due to a car wreck knocking down a power line. We lit candles, talked and our young cousin taught us a few camp fire songs. When the power came back on he let out a long sigh.... he almost fell over when I reminded him we could turn the lights off and continue. lol...
If you're that serious, you will want a backup power supply. Mother Nature is on meth around here. How else can you explain 70 on monday and snow on thursday (it has probably happened). Ice can disrupt power for days. Or hours. Just depends on where you are. I'd be more concerned about ice than hurricanes or tornados.
Live in Mooresville but not within the city.
Lots of trees (we have perhaps 200 trees on our acre lot) and power lines aren't buried. we are also across the street from the lake, so in a slight valley and can feel the colder temp compared to on the main road if we go walking on a cold day.
Owned our home for just over 6 years and lived here for over 4 and only had 1 power outage due to lightening hitting the top of the electricity pole at the bottom of the driveway.Power was off for maybe 2 hours.
Never had an icestorm but have had a couple of small tornados touch down and did moderate damage about 1 mile from our home.
One of the things I find crazy is that we don't have tornado sirens and we don't have a home phone line (I believe they have an automated telephone alert) so need to rely on alerts from a weather channel via cell phones. This is fine now that we're on Verizon-they have the best coverage but my parents home about 3 miles from us has problems with reception sometimes.
We have our own well and if it's below freezing have 2 light bulbs in well housing that we turn on to prevent well pump from freezing. To be honest, sometimes we forget if it's a brief cold snap and never had it freeze (we have a lot of shelter from evergreen trees). If the temps drop below freezing it's often brief - maybe from 4 am until 9 am.
In 2009 we had snow 3 times that hung around for 2-3 days and more low temps but last 2 winters none worth mentioning and this winter has been very mild (so far)
^One of those $19.95 weather radios with the alert function should take care of warnings. They sell them in the grocery stores in the summer and usually co-branded with whatever TV station is pushing them.
We have lived in Huntersville for 5 years and I can't recall losing power even once. Our utilities are underground which helps a lot. During this same time period our friends we left back in New Jersey endured two separate power outages lasting more than a week!! It was very difficult for them.
Cable service is a different story. While not frequent, there have been a few internet outages, one lasting over 4 hours. Very annoying, especially if you are trying to run a business.
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