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04 August, 2012

Ernesto - Whazzup?

Make up your mind will ya? The computer models (http://www.wunderground.com/tropical/tracking/at201205_model.html) show you possibly going south of us or possibly north of us... What that makes me think of, is that you're planning to go right over the top of us. Which is it?

North of us is probably the best for us. South probably means more wind and heavy rains. Right over us kind of speaks for itself.

Dr. Jeff Masters, who started the Weather Underground, in his daily weather blog (http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/article.html), says "Ernesto's survival into today means that the storm now potentially poses a formidable threat to the Western Caribbean."That's enough to cause some real pucker-power, if you know what I mean

I'm thinking right now that Sunday is probably going to be a busy day for us here at Casa Winjama. I'm guessing we'll be taking down the swimming pool awning, among other things, and doing all the other preparedness things we've mentioned in our Hurricane Preparedness Checklist (http://winjama.blogspot.com/2010/05/dust-off-plan.html). This page, with the link to the checklist, also has links to several other worthwhile hurricane-related sites.

For those of us living in Belize, LOVE-FM (http://www.lovefm.com/) is the radio station du jour during events like this. Their frequencies range from 88.9, (94.7 in Corozal - thanks to Alan), 95.1, to 98.1 (MHz) - just like it says in one of their on-air jingles. They do a surprisingly good job of letting you know what is happening throughout the country. Plus, they have a generator, so they're likely to stay on the air in the event of power disruptions.

I forgot to add a thing here...

The chart shown below in color is the one everybody looks at. It's good for providing some information about possible and projected tracks for storms, but it doesn't give a real good feeling for the possible areas that will be affected by high winds and heavy rains. In that regard, it can be misleading.
Tracking Cone
Here's a graphic showing the same storm, Ernesto of course. As you can see by the larger shaded area, the danger zone is quite a bit larger. It's always worthwhile to keep that in mind as you prepare. Thanks to the National Hurricane Center for producing the images.
Mariner's 1-2-3 Rule
 For a fairly understandable definition of the 'Mariner's 1-2-3 rule,' see Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_cyclone_forecasting)

In the meantime, I'm staying glued to the laptop and will be checking the reports and track forecasts for Ernesto pretty religiously throughout the next few days.

As my friend Charles always says, "Stay safe."

Cheers

2 comments:

Alan said...

I guess you don't tune in to Love FM often.

Love FM's frequency in Corozal/Consejo is 94.7

Dave Rider said...

Hi Alan,

Thanks for the update. Actually, I do listen to Love FM when I'm in Belize City. I have it programmed in my car radio. Here in Corozal, I usually listen to Rainbow-FM - but that's another story.

I know Love-FM broadcasts on several different frequencies, so I went to their Website yesterday to find those before I posted anything.

You can imagine my shock at finding no mention on their Website of any of their frequencies. So, what I did was go to Wikipedia and pull their list. It didn't include 94.7. It should have and I should have remembered too.

I even went back to Love-FM's Website this morning to make sure. Nope. No mention at all of frequencies. They do spend Webspace on how to 'like' them on Facebook, but not a shilling's worth on their frequencies.

Anyway, I'll add 94.7 to my list.
Again, thanks for bringing it to my attention.

Cheers,
Dave