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I had never heard of a "Gust Front" until last week, but we apparently experienced one last Sunday. It was a sudden major wind storm that nobody predicted. The technical description is available at March 07, 2004 High Wind Event, but it includes more information than most of us want to know. A brief description of the power outages is at WXII12.com - Weather - Power Being Restored Across North Carolina. Those links don't even begin to describe what happened, but I did not find anything more evocative on a quick search.
Last Sunday we had mild weather almost all day, up until about sunset. Then the storm came up extremely quickly. I was getting ready to pick the boys up at church when I thought I heard thunder, but the roar was continuous rather than brief. Outside the wind was strong enough that it was hard to control the car on the road. I think the unofficial reports in our area were 60-70 mph. It was physically difficult to walk in the wind even with partial protection from the house. Anything that wasn't tied down was in motion. There were tree limbs all over the roads.
The good news is that we did not lose power at the house, but a lot of the area did lose power. When the wind blew the trash cans down the road one of the lids didn't stay latched, but thankfully that is the only thing we lost. One of my nurses lost 2 cars and part of the roof of her house when a tree from a neighbor's yard fell down from the wind.
I've never been through a full strength hurricane, and I hope that this is the closest I ever come. Knowing how much damage the wind did around here, it is hard for me to imagine why anybody would ever voluntarily try to 'ride out' a hurricane with even stronger winds complicated by heavy rain and (on the coast) the storm surge.

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