Hurricane Season Ends Today!

Once again, we've come through relatively unscathed. Another hurricane season come and gone. For the third year in a row, there have been 19 named storms in the Atlantic/Caribbean area. It's pretty unusual to have this level of storm activity in any three-year period. Dr. Jeff Masters, founder of Weather Underground, said that "Since 1851, only two seasons--2005 (28 named storms) and 1933 (20 named storms)--have been busier than 2010, 2011, and 2012."

Preliminary 2012 Atlantic Storms

Even though today is officially the last day of the season, it's wise to keep a weather eye peeled for a couple more weeks. There's always the possibility for a late, out-of-season storm to hit us. As we used to say in  another life - "Relax, but don't go limp."

Hard to believe that six months just blew by (pun intended) like that. Now all we need is for the skies to clear up so the sun can shine unimpeded and warm our pool back up. Seventy-six degrees just ain't cutting it. We took down the awning once again to encourage that warming process, but with the sun hiding behind a cloud bank, that becomes a tall order.

Anyway, if you've been holding your breath, waiting for the next storm to strike, you can begin to exhale now. Slowly, slowly... There. Now, don't you feel better?

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