Sunday, July 20, 2008

Stormy Sunday

UPDATE AT 12:25 P.M.: The storm has now formed into Tropical Storm Dolly. It has moved to the west/southwest of Grand Cayman but we are still getting its remnants.

The Cayman Islands are getting hit this morning with the strongest storm since Hurricane Dean last August. As I look out our front window there are sheets of rain coming down sideways in our parking lot and just lashing the heck out of the cars. The tree's and bushes sway strongly every few moments as gusts of wind blow between the two buildings. The weather service says that the system hasn't formed into a tropical storm but that it is producing tropical storm force winds. It isn't quite like the sound of airplanes taking off that we experienced last year but it is still pretty spectacular watching what mother nature can do. We didn't put up our hurricane shutters so the cats have been sitting on the couch by the window and watching the storm. It should blow over by late today or early tomorrow and hopefully wont bring too much flooding to the low lying parts of Grand Cayman. As a precaution yesterday we bought the rest of our supplies for the Hurricane Kit and filled up one of our five gallon water containers with filtered drinkable water. If there is a surge they cut of the water for a while so we laid in a days supply of drinking water just in case. We do still need to get some containers for potable water and will probably do that this week. Everyone has been talking about how early the season started this year. Bertha which fortunately moved north and never entered the Caribbean is the earliest Cape Verde storm in 22 years and the longest lived July storm ever recorded. It looks like Bertha will make it all the way to Iceland and into the Arctic Ocean which is amazing when you consider it formed off the coast of Africa and crossed the Atlantic. It will literally affect weather systems in four continents (Africa, N. and S. America, Europe) and possibly five (Asia over the Arctic circle).