It ain't over...

Plus, the US election isn't over either. Many votes still need to be counted.

So it goes...

WHAT? Hurricane Beryl???

Well, it is that time of the year...

OK.

This forecaster has a nice calm voice and does a good job. Check out his website for video tropical weather updates: https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/



It seems like Beryl may not be anything for us to worry about as she will probably fizzle out but nevertheless we will still prepare for a storm.

So It Goes

The Royal Terns Are Back... WELCOME

Last week we saw the return of Royal Terns. This is cool because to us it means the end of those summer storms.

Great to see you guys. Hope you had a nice vacation.

This is the next system out in the Atlantic...

Invest 93L - Hurricane Model Sept 14 2015 - Wunderground

which doesn't appear to be coming our way :)

Tomorrow is Hurricane Marilyn's 20th anniversary in the USVI. Glad we missed that one!

So it is going...

Maybe we should leave our storm anchors down

UPDATED after 11:00am forecast... 

What's up with this?

Computer models from Wunderground.com

September 5, 2015 Invest 91L

WELL, it is now this...

5-Day Forecast Cone - NOAA/NHC

September 5, 2015 - Tropical Depression Seven

Might become Tropical Storm Grace tomorrow...  Wonderful :(

Yes, I think we'll be leaving the storm anchors down for a few more days (after checking them out, of course)

[Back to the earlier post...]

It's still early days though.  Lots of time for it to fizzle or head more to the north. Hopefully it will not even get a name.

Remember Hurricane Marilyn? It has been 20 years... She hit St Thomas on September 15-16, 1995.

Have a wonderful Labor Day Weekend!

The terns were right

We were worried about TS/Hurricane Gonzalo even though the royal terns were back in town. We prepared our boat and put out two more anchors.

The first few projected tracks had the little TS symbol right on top of us but fortunately, Hurricane Gonzalo stayed about 100 miles away to the northeast.

The terns were right.

90L is TS Gonzolo

GONZOLO, great name for a storm. Makes me think of a Marx Brother movie.  But as cool as his name might be (we experienced Omar a few years ago), we really don't want him passing through here.

The Hurricane Hunters flew through Invest 90L earlier today and found out that it was a Tropical Storm... didn't even mess with the Tropical Depression phase.

They predict it will be an H-thing when it gets to Puerto Rico.

So, guess you know what we'll be busy with... best to be prepared.

Hope the GFS model (red line in above image) is accurate and it will pass quite aways from us.

Here's a bit from Advisory #1 - 130 PM AST SUN OCT 12 2014

DISCUSSION AND 48-HOUR OUTLOOK
------------------------------
AT 130 PM AST...1730 UTC...THE CENTER OF TROPICAL STORM GONZALO WAS
LOCATED NEAR LATITUDE 16.4 NORTH...LONGITUDE 58.4 WEST. GONZALO IS
MOVING TOWARD THE WEST NEAR 10 MPH...17 KM/H...AND THIS GENERAL
MOTION IS EXPECTED TO CONTINUE THROUGH TUESDAY...FOLLOWED BY A TURN
TOWARD THE WEST-NORTHWEST TUESDAY NIGHT. ON THE FORECAST TRACK...
GONZALO IS EXPECTED TO MOVE THROUGH THE LEEWARD ISLANDS BY EARLY
MONDAY MORNING.

MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS ARE NEAR 40 MPH...65 KM/H...WITH HIGHER
GUSTS.  STRENGTHENING IS FORECAST DURING THE NEXT 48 HOURS.

TROPICAL-STORM-FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 45 MILES...75 KM
FROM THE CENTER.

THE ESTIMATED MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE IS 1009 MB...29.80 INCHES.

So it goes

What the heck? Invest 90L !!!

I've been meaning to put the ground tackle away that has been sitting on deck since the last storm threat. In fact, today seemed like a good day to do so until I went to look at weatherunderground.com

Invest 90L - Saturday, October 11 2014, 08:00am

I'm hoping the return of the Royal Terns and the increased population of Pelicans was not premature.

I was going to check out Amazon's Halloween costumes for pets but I'm sort of put off of frivolity right now... except, this is one I haven't seen before...

Animal Planet Peacock Dog Costume

So it goes...

That's the way I like it

I have www.wunderground.com (tropical weather) as my Firefox homepage and I was so happy to read Dr Jeff Master's headline tease to his blog this afternoon...

Quiet... No threat... I want to read more of the same over the summer months!

So it's going :)

Will it become Dorian?

Tropical depression forms over the eastern Atlantic...

Not what I wanted to see when starting up the computer this morning.

Just when we start getting a couple of nice days, too.  Oh well, it looks like it should pass well to the North (fingers crossed) and I prefer just some rain rather than rain with wind :)

July 24, 2013 - 8am EDT Advisory #1

So it goes...

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Another list...

Well, that's one off the list !!!

Tropical Storm Andrea

Hope not to be face-to-face with any of these this year... Doesn't have to happen :)

We'll see How It Goes...

Roseanne Roseannadanna & Tropical Storms

As Roseanne Roseannadanna would say,

"Well, it just goes to show you, it's always something. If it ain't one thing, it's another".

Well, here's one thing...

Invest 98L - Sunday, 18 Sept 2011, 2pm models

And another!

Invest 99L - Sunday, 18 Sept 2011, 2pm models

Saw these this afternoon and I thought I was gonna be sick. So I says to them, "Hey Weather Guys, what are ya tryin' to do, make me sick?".

Oh, Gilda... those were the days! Miss your humor...

So it goes...

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Christmas Winds?

Invest 95??? What the frell???

This is too depressing for me... Please look at BoatBits for more info.

I'd rather be planning the party for the cats tomorrow and have visions of sugar plums :)

IL PLUIE... LOTS OF RAIN FOR ST CROIX

They say that St Croix has been hit worse than St Thomas or St John with the amount of rainfall we've had over the past few days.  The schools on St Croix are closed today while the other islands of the USVI are open.

This video was posted to YouTube on Wednesday, November 10, 2010. I wonder what it looks like now.

Yesterday we planned to walk up to the Pueblo supermarket at Golden Rock Shopping Center. When we got to the Christiansted dinghy dock we realized that the rain was coming towards us, so we high-tailled it (well, putt-putted) over to St Croix Marine and walked over to Schooner Bay Market while it was raining lightly.

It was really coming down while we were in the store and when we left, the streets were flowing with water. It let up for a bit, rained for a while in the afternoon, and then it rained all night. We have a couple of inches in the washtub I left outside, so I suppose the roads are even worse now.

From the St Croix Source (Yesterday's news... I hope they update soon):

• The Day After: Crowds View Frederiksted's Battered Beachside
• Body Of St. Croix Flood Victim Recovered 
• Governor, Emergency Officials Assessing Flood Damage

Here's something I didn't know was in the works...

Smoking ban in effect; enforcement is delayed
By Aldeth Lewin, Daily News Staff
Published: November 10, 2010

ST. THOMAS — The new smoking ban goes into effect today, but the V.I. Health Department and the V.I. Licensing and Consumer Affairs Department will not enforce the new law for another three months.

The Smoke-Free Act prohibits smoking in any public place including restaurants, bars and all places of employment. Smoking still will be allowed on beaches, but not within 20 feet of concession stands, restaurants and other businesses located on the beach.  

Environmental Health officers will not issue citations until Feb. 10 so businesses will have more time to come into compliance with the new law, Health Commissioner Julia Sheen said in a statement issued Tuesday.  Read more...

Buffy & Willow are outside taking advantage of this break in the rain to be outdoors.  Willow loves lapping up rain drops once it stops raining.

Let's go fishing...

Tropical Storm Gaston et nous UPDATE

YIPPEE !!!!! We just checked NOAA's 5pm update for TS Gaston and their Public Advisory #6 says...

GASTON BECOMES A REMNANT LOW OVER THE EAST-CENTRAL TROPICAL ATLANTIC... THIS IS THE LAST PUBLIC ADVISORY ISSUED BY THE NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER ON GASTON UNLESS REGENERATION OCCURS.

This is wonderful news...

We did a big shop today but that we needed to anyways. Never hurts to have an extra sack of cat food or a big bag of Snickers :)

Tropical Storm Gaston et nous

Wonderful... TS Gaston is approximately 1790 miles away from St Croix. Too far for accurate predictions but I want to know NOW.

This is the 5am Stormpulse.com forecast for Gaston.

I still like the orange one the best... Come on, ORANGE! yeah!!!

The ditzy lady on the radio yesterday told everyone that 2 of the models for Fiona had the track circling back so we might get hit twice (never came close to us and there were no curlicues on the models we saw). Today she was going on about Gaston and how there were so many tracks focussing on St Croix & St Thomas. I think she would like to be a Fox News reporter and just wants to sound important regardless of facts that just get in the way :)

We didn't make it to the store yesterday as we had water in the outboard's fuel tank. That took a bit of time to sort out but it's done.  It's something that just kind of normally accumulates but we had lots of water in the dinghy from Hurricane Earl's rain which probably added to it.

Last night we were invited to dinner by our neighbor on the next mooring over. He's not a liveaboard and we finally met because of Hurricane Earl.  That was a good thing because now we have each other's phone numbers and email addresses so we can communicate in case of a problem with the boats.  We went to Angry Nate's on the Christiansted Boardwalk and had their Wendesday night Prime Rib special. The food was great (salad or New England clam chowder, big steak that was actually rare, baked potato with all the trimmings, perfectly cooked crisp green beans with almonds, and a fruit cobbler for $22) and so was the service!  The waitress started off by bringing us water glasses... how unusual. She stopped by several times to see how we were doing, plus she replenished our water and ice teas before the levels hit the bottom. This might seem like a small thing to you, but I haven't had this type of service in many, many years. We've had dinner there twice and both times were excellent.

We are going shopping today (everything willing) and do a bit of a megashop.  This is a 3-day weekend before a potential storm, so we have to get food, water, gas, and hit the ATM before the machine's money runs out...  I'd love (love is not the right word)... I could really do with hitting the laundromat but it's such a drag.

The amount of rain we had yesterday was amazing.  I'm looking forward to making a rain catcher but that has to wait until other things are in place.

So It Goes...

Tropical Storm Fiona - St Croix US Virgin Islands

Tropical Storm Fiona is about 200 miles to the northeast of St Croix.  She has passed us by but we just had about an hour of rain.  Some of it was pretty hard, too.  Bob & I went for a swim while it was raining. It was very nice.

Now we see that we now have Tropical Depression #9.  Whoopee.

It has quite a wide swath for its cone of death.  Here is the current (11am) forecast from the Stormpulse website.

Click image to enlarge

I put on the Forecast Models option.  I prefer the orange one. It shows that it is currently 1966 (that was a good year) miles from St Croix. It's still early days for TD9 so we'll just patiently wait and see what happens.

Look at the Hurricane Weather Widget over in the right hand column... You might have to scroll down a bit or maybe up a tad... It is very colorful right now with all of the various storm paths. 

So It Goes...

Hurricane Earl tidbits

I've been looking around the great world wide web for information on boats in St Martin and the Virgin Islands in regards to how we fared against Hurricane Earl. I haven't seen too much so far but maybe that's because a lot of people still don't have power and/or internet service.

Here's a post on the Cruisers Forum from St Martin that has a short video and two photos of boats in Simpson Bay Lagoon. If they can't remove the wrecks, they really need to secure them so they will not move in future storms and cause further havoc.

According to Hans Meevis' Jewelry Blog, Dutch Sint-Maarten experienced 165 power failures last year. That adds up to 3 weeks of total downtime. Good old GEBE... He has a few good photos of hurricane damage.

I mentioned the photos from The BVI Beacon yesterday that has various photos from Tortola BVI.

I was surprised to see video and photos from Frederiksted. Much nastier over there than here in Gallows Bay, Christiansted.

• St Croix Source Photo Gallery
• St Croix Source Video

Here's a video taken at 6pm from the Holiday Inn on the Charlotte Amalie waterfront. He says a few things that are inaccurate such as it is a category 4 and could even be a 5.  Also, the brown water is crap that comes out of the "guts" or drainage ditches that empties into Long Bay. Quite often this trash is blamed on the boaters but just look at the ditch behind MacDonalds in Frenchtown that is waiting for a good rain to be washed out into the sea. (This is one of my pet peeves... can't you tell?) this part of Long Bay is especially bad when the swell comes in because they are reflected off of the wall.

Here's a video of a plane landing at the St Maarten Airport. It is a great tourist attraction.

Here's a 5-minute video of Hurricane Earl and St Croix USVI. I haven't been able to watch it because my connection just got really S..L..O..W...

NEW (SEPT 2): Here's a story on Latitude 38 'Lectronic Latitude with pictures from Tortola

See my previous Hurricane Earl posts.

I have a bit of a rant to do but don't have time right now as we have to get ready catch the 10:30 bus to go shopping.  But first, we have to drag that catamaran's mooring away so we won't get tangled in it.

So It Goes...

Hurricane Earl - Noon Update

Monday, Aug 30, 2010: I just had a phone call from someone to see how we are doing.  That's really nice! (ooohh, we just had some thunder and Willow is wondering if it is time to run and hide) He is watching Hurricane Earl on TV and was concerned.  He was very surprised when I told him we were having 15 knots of wind and that St Thomas has a bit more.

Right now we are having a slight squall but when he called we might have only had 5 knots.  I'M NOT COMPLAINING!

We never consult PassageWeather.com or WindGuru.com anymore.  Last year when we were trying to make a decision about two possible named storms they were WRONG.  They showed that the storm would pass to the north, for example, instead of it passing south which it did and based on their prediction we would have been going into the storm... not a good thing to do :)

So, just for fun, I looked at what they have to say... Currently we have between 10 and 15 knots.

Here, WindGuru says we should be having 35 knots of wind with gusts to 43.  It's been pretty much like any other day except it is from the wrong direction.

This is the 11am (AST) prediction which shows St Croix in the orange 35-40 knot band. That's not what we have (fortunately).

I wonder when and how often they update these potentially important forecasts.

Here's a couple of pictures that I took at noon of our neighbor.

Here comes a bit of rain (12:33pm)

Once again, I'm glad..... (STARTED TO RAIN AND HAD TO DEAL WITH STUFF SO DIDN'T FINISH THIS POST)

UPDATE... AUGUST 31, 2010 11:03AM

So... let's see.... I shut down my computer and dealt with the rain and then took a nap. I woke up with one of the anchors stowed on the deck making noise due to the rocking of the boat. Then I heard Bob make an exclamation something like "where did that come from" but perhaps a bit more colorful :)

Surprise!

It was 2:30pm and there was a catamaran next to us.  Where did they come from and when?  We didn't hear a motor or an anchor dropping.  There was no dinghy so did they plop the boat there really quick and get out of Dodge or did it drag the mooring and anchor from where we saw them earlier in the morning?

They did bang into us a couple of times...

Fortunately we had an internet connection throughout the storm (thank you Broadband VI) and we looked up the daysail catamaran's website and found a phone number so they could deal with the boat. They cut themselves loose from the mooring and shortened up the scope on their anchor which allowed them to clear our bow when the wind shifted. They stayed aboard all night which made me feel better. This morning Bob looked at their mooring and it was complete with all the bits including two bent sandscrews. Their anchor was probably fouled on the mooring next to us (fortunately not the one we are secured to!).

This morning (Tuesday) when I was making coffee at 7am, I noticed a monohull way out and pretty close to the reef.  It looked stationary but there wasn't a dinghy attached and probably unattended.  I wonder what route this boat took? It gets pretty shallow in places behind that island! Did it go by us or down the other channel?

Our neighbor said that he saw the boat out there at 3am.

At around 8:00 this morning, we saw a dinghy and a person on the bow moving it. Another dinghy looked like it was on its way out there but then turned around and went away... Strange... Was he looking for salvage? Anyway, I don't know who they were but they seemed to have left it in a weird place and quite possibly tied to a navigation buoy :)

I noticed that there are a couple of uprooted trees on the beach near the pavillion.

This motorboat was dropped off near us (of course) for Earl,

They quickly lost their bimini and the dinghy kept trying to blow off the foredeck but didn't for some reason...


We've had quite a busy day catching up with various things. No rain which is nice.  It is now almost 6pm and definitely time for a rum on the foredeck with Bob and the company of the kittens.  They were happy to go outside today.  It is nice and calm.

I hope Fiona will be as nice if she stops by for a visit. We are going to leave our anchor down (along with being on a mooring) in the meantime.

Hope everyone else is OK. Here are some photos from The BVI Beacon for Tortola BVI.

Hurricane Earl - One Good Thing

One good thing about Hurricane Earl is that "they" say the worst bit of the storm for us should be between 11am and 6pm.  Hmmmm, that's a long time but at least it is during daylight.  Darkness adds a factor of x5 to my perception of storm conditions :)

Stormpulse showing the 8am forecast with the "circle of death" positioned at 2pm.

Looks like we shouldn't get H-strength winds.

KEEP PUSHING EARL NORTH !!! WE APPRECIATE YOUR EFFORTS

We don't have a wind generator whizzing away and with no mast we don't have wind whistling through the rigging which can be quite disconcerting.

They say we might get 6-8 inches of rain. Have to go bail out the dinghy during the next lull. There are flash flood warnings in effect..

The radio went off the air earlier and they said they had to go on generator power.  I'm surprised that we still have internet service because quite often the islands shut off the power during storms to prevent damage to the system (so they say).

When we went out at 7am to tape up the hatch above the bed, Bob's glasses started to blow off. He lost a pair of glasses in Hurricane Omar in St Martin, so we now have found our little tethers to keep our glasses on.

It stopped raining so Willow has come out... but here's pictures of the kitties during the last squall

Willow hiding under the bed and Buffy chilling out on my seat.

It's quiet right now so we'll have to go outside to tidy up and bail the dinghy, but we haven't finished our first cup of coffee yet!

This is what it looked like at 8am.

Gallows Bay, Christiansted, St Croix USVI - 30 Aug 2010, 8:00 am

Hopefully, we'll still be online for the 11am forecast.

Here's a link to the webcam at the Christiansted Boardwalk, by gotostcroix.com Harbor Cam

Catch ya later. Keep safe!
=

Earl... Be a Good Boy, please

Well, it is now after midnight and the 11pm Earl forecast isn't looking so good for us.

http://www.stormpulse.com/tropical-storm-earl-2010

At least Earl is still classified as a Tropical Storm, but as it passes by it's supposed to be an H1 and then an H2. Don't want that... Not for us... Not for anybody...

So let's get together and push Earl to the North... NOW! Take a right turn, Earl. Be a good boy!

Earl, imagine yourself as a helium balloon and float upwards... yes, to the north... relax and float... Chill out...

Buffy & Willow don't like storms... Does anybody? 

Tomorrow morning, depending on how things look we'll probably be toodling out of here.

So It Goes...