That storm I mentioned in my previous post is now a Hurricane (called Rina) and is going to Mexico. That being said, another system is now on Cayman’s radar.
This system, now called Invest97, is just off the coast of South America and west of the chain of Caribbean Islands. If it continues on the current course, it may be in Cayman late this week. Current forecast, makes this storm into a Tropical storm, so no hurricanes on the horizon. Probably the worst news in all of this is that I have a 10k run this weekend, so it may be a very soggy run. But, on the bring side it wont be a hot/sweaty run 🙂
A day or two I looked at the long range forecast for tropical systems and there was nothing on the horizon. Now, we have two system that seem to have “popped up” virtually overnight. One of them is of particular interest since it is at a similar position where Hurricane Paloma was almost 3-years ago already.
Forecast is for a tropical storm sometime mid-week. Already though, the outer bands of this system brought us copious amounts of rain today. In fact, I got to work and had to sit in my car for +-10 minutes since it was raining so much. Even with an umbrella, I would still have gotten my legs and feet (and shoes …) soaked I just listened to some tunes and waited for it to rain a bit less.
Travel to a new Caribbean destination soon. Stay tuned 🙂
In the last week or so we have been getting lots of rain. Not all day rain, but lots of isolated showers like in my previous post. Today it rained so hard that I postponed lunch with a colleague for 15 minutes. When we left the building there was a bit of drizzle and by the time we got to the place it was nice and sunny again.
Later in the afternoon this scenario repeated itself. However, got a great sight from my office building … a full rainbow. Very nice!
Now, all of this rain has to go somewhere and do something. Here is a perfect example of what water mixed with very warm weather can do which is not to far from where we live. This house is under construction and has been “inactive” for a while. My guess is that they are waiting for some more money and they will resume construction at that time.
However, what was a perfectly cleared front lawn and drive path, is now a sort of overgrown jungle. It would essentially be impossible to go in there with a car and not get it terribly scratched. A heavy duty weed whacker would be needed. In a few weeks (or less …) I would expect not to see the house at all from the road.
On the storm/hurricane front, nothing at all. Essentially, every system so far has either fizzed away or turned north a few hundred miles before the Caribbean basin.
When flying back to Cayman a few days ago, I experienced something new : an aborted landing. What happened was that just a few hundred meters from the runway, a massive rain started and obviously hampered visibility. I had a window seat and the rain was hitting the wings quite violently. It is rainy season right now, so this is not totally unexpected. However, what always amazes me is that these isolated showers are generally small clusters of a massive amount of rain. 10 minutes and its all done … and we are all wet. So the pilot hit the gas and we went up, out of the weather and cruised around for a little while.
Of course I got some pictures of this event! My trusty compact Canon camera is never far away. Georgetown is essentially engulfed in that small storm cell.
Now west of Grand Cayman and looking east ; beyond the cruise ship is town … the ship is a few seconds away from getting very wet.
Now in the middle of Cayman (over the North Sound) looking east … we flew around for 10 minutes or so and are now ready to land from the opposite end of the runway ; storm is now out to sea and over that cruise ship.
Just yesterday, I had the opportunity to go boating with some people from the office. On the way out via the North Sound, we spotted the mosquito plane coming up behind us. It was very neat to get such a close up view of this plane while it was in the air. Sorry for the shaky video, in my defense, I was on a speeding boat when this was was taken.
Now for our office meeting. It was at Starfish point, not far from Rum Point. You can get here by car. Great place for an afternoon drink … note the coolers, no one got dehydrated 🙂
… and BBQ. Our office had arranged for a local cook to come out and BBQ some Jerk chicken and pork as well as rice & beans and salad. We has also invited some clients to join us. Awesome Friday afternoon.
Well, Irene decided to take a northern turn upon entering the Caribbean. Good for Cayman, very bad for my friends in the Turks & Caicos Islands and in the Bahamas. As of writing, Irene is a Category-2 storm and is forecasted to grow to a 3 and maybe even a 4, effectively becoming what is know as a “Major Hurricane” (a hurricane Category 3 or above).
I have been exchanging BBM’s (Blackberry messages) with friends in Turks (on the Island of Providenciales) and although the storm is not yet upon them (will be sometime tonight) winds are already very strong and howling. Not looking great. The Bahamas are in preparation mode and expect to feel it sometime on Wednesday and Thursday as the storm works its way north towards the US coastline. Note the red zones below ; they are all under “hurricane warning”, which means that impact is almost certain.
