And the news was just passed on to me that we have an univited guest barrelling in just in time for a 3 day weekend here in Okinawa, Japan. In the form of a typhoon.
Here's to wishing the power/air con doesn't go out, and the Low pressure does not give me a killer headache. And, maybe, just maybe, I can get some serious writing done in the lousy weather...
Goodness knows not much else is going to happen this weekend!
posted
I hope it skips past you! Make sure you have some lanterns and plenty of fresh pens and lantern fuel or batteries, so you can write longhand by lantern light if you need to!
Posts: 1911 | Registered: Mar 2007
| IP: Logged |
posted
As I type this, the fringe of Hurricane Ike is over my head, dumping rain and blowing wind. (Yes, there's also a roof over my head.) The center, where the severe weather is kept, is well away from me, and I can tolerate this.
Keep a good thought...if you live in a low-lying area leave it...and lay in a few sensible supplies, like food and battery-powered radios and lanterns, for the immediate period after if power goes off.
Don't count on writing---I know I've always found the situation too intense for that. You can't concentrate if you think the glass windows are about to blow in.
posted
I pay more attention to the N. Atlantic storms since I live in Florida, but I noticed that the last typhoon season was non-stop, often three or more tropical storms or typhoons lined up like railroad cars for months, slamming every portion of the East Asian coast and islands.
posted
It's 8:10pm, 84degrees F and we have a bout a 40 mph base wind with gusts up to about 60. The eye is still approximately 150 miles plus south-southeast of us, heading north-northwest. Power is out at Galveston, and we have had 3 brownouts so far.
The 'whooooo' of the wind is constant now. Several small branches have failed. Mother Nature's pruning is in effect.
I took the boys and our Bulgarian friend (and her husband) snipe hunting. We saw 7, and my friend Sol was brushed by one as it ran past him. Damn things! They are SO hard to catch. The boys totally freaked when we jumped up[ some small animal. It was probably a possum, but hey!, it could have been a snipe.
I have the boys settled down with a movie as long as power lasts. They're happy.
Power outages are now advancing north, just 50 miles south now.
The typhoon almost completely skirted us by, just 12 hours of real crappy wind and rain (nothing dangerous) puncuated by random bursts of thunder off in the distance, while I'm trying to sleep of course...
Floyd in NYC was actually much worse than this "typhoon".
I do miss actually getting to see the lightning hit something! Living on a smallish island I think it always strikes out at sea. Kind of unsatisfying from a weather bug's perspective like hearing fireworks instead of seeing them.
posted
Never had the eye of a hurricane go over where I was...Charley was the worst I went through, but the eye was proably twenty miles away at its closest. Till Charley, the worst storm I'd been through was the tail end of a hurricane in upstate New York when I was a kid.
Sorrow was mine when, during the storm, I saw hundreds of roof tiles blown over my yard. Great was my joy when I found they were nearly all from my neighbor's house. (Considerably less great was my joy when I had to pick them all up out of my yard.)
Good luck, Mike, we'll hear from you when we hear from you.
posted
There's a photo on the front page of our newspaper this morning, showing a bunch of houses on stilts in Galveston. One near the front is burning, and it's the only piece of color in the photo. The caption seemed to imply that the fire was hurricane related, but I wonder. The water around the houses is calm and the only sign of wind is from the direction the smoke is blowing. Maybe the house caught on fire after it was evacuated? The scene doesn't look to me as if the hurricane has arrived yet.
An interesting book about the other great hurricane to hit Galveston (the one we kept hearing people refer to when we lived in Victoria, TX--about an hour's drive northwest of Houston) is ISAAC'S STORM by Erik Larson. Amazing what happened when that thing hit.
posted
Ah! Okay, then that means the photo was taken after the storm had passed through? It wasn't clear what the timing was. I guess I need to go check the National Weather website and see where Ike is now.
If you select Radar, you get a map that shows the radar for the whole country, and then you can select a part of the country for a close-up. Composite Loop on the left side of the screen can show you how the radar reflections are moving. (I hope that makes sense.)
It appears that Ike's eye has moved northwest of Houston, but there's a nasty sweep of weather still moving northeast through Houston and the area just north of Houston and an even nastier sweep moving northeast through the Lake Charles, LA area.
You can also select "go to a loop of this map" at the bottom of the national map to see how everything is moving. Interesting stuff going on in Oklahoma where the two different storm directions are running into each other.
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited September 13, 2008).]
posted
I think I mentioned it over in Hooks & Books a while back, but I didn't much care for Isaac's Storm---as a literary effort. Good for the facts, which were abundant and useful...but something about the writing style irritated me. Nothing I could put my finger on...but I've avoided Erik Larson's work ever since, despite some interesting subject matter.
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Well, Larson's DEVIL IN WHITE CITY was also full of facts. I was disappointed by the "devil" (serial killer) parts (not enough real information and the speculation was pretty vague), but I found the "white city" (Chicago World's Fair) stuff quite interesting. I read it before visiting Chicago for the first time, and we were able to go to the site and tour the only remaining museum.
He's a good researcher, but not much of a story-teller, I guess.
posted
KDW - my husband has recently read that book (DEVIL) and liked it, but I have a distaste for serial killer types of things. We were talking about it with other friends who have read it and were debating whether it would be possible to read every other chapter (or basically the non-serial-killer chapters) and still have a positive reading experience. What do you think?
We're native Chicagoans, I think I need to read it just for the fun factor. If you wanted to read a totally different book set in similar environs - try Chasing Vermeer by Blue Baillet (I think I have that spelled correctly.) It's a mid-grade book (below YA) so it'll be a quick read. The two protagonist middle schoolers live in Hyde Park and visit the Art Institute, which I dearly hope you had the opportunity to see when you were in Chicago. If not, you'll have to give me advanced notice before you come again so I can take you. Best museum in the city, even though I love love love the Museum of Science and Industry (that was featured in DEVIL.)
posted
Oh, yeah, KayTi, go ahead and skip the serial killer stuff. The world's fair stuff is great all by itself.
By the time we got to the Art Institute, I was about museumed out. We were visiting my daughter and son-in-law who lived in a high-rise next to the shoreline drive and just south of the river, and we walked down to the aquarium and the field museum and the planetarium and so on and so forth, just about every day (besides taking the train to the Museum of Science and Industry one day). We got to know the Millenium Park pretty well before we were done.
If I ever make it back there, I'd love to take you up on your offer.
posted
Well, somebody whose name escapes me wrote a very thorough novelization of the H. H. Holmes case some years before, which was nasty and disgusting and I enjoyed it very much---but I don't know where the research and facts end and the novelization begins. Some of what I took for fact may be fanciful...
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Don't wait for the insurance adjustor---make any temporary repairs you have to---tarp your roof if you need to---get that tree off your roof right away, if you can do so without creating further damage---and document anything you do.
Important: don't climb up on anything to cut with a chainsaw. (My brother learned this the hard way.)
It's a storm surge graphic of Hurricane Ike from NOAA, and it's pretty amazing. Besides showing the storm surge, it also shows the path of the hurricane eye.
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited September 24, 2008).]
posted
Hey Kathleen - that graphic looks like it's from NOAA not NASA. I realize the average person doesn't care or even notice the difference between the two. I have "personal" reasons for pointing that out. I'm not sure where you found the link for it, but it looks like it might be model data and not what was actually measured?
Posts: 133 | Registered: Jul 2008
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
