Tropical Storm Irene

Flooding

Patterns occur in everyone's life, the predictable summer, fall, winter, spring, the twelve months, the holidays, the celestial milestones, full moons, solstices and eclipses births, deaths and tropical storms. St. Croix is so well situated that a pattern has developed over time that brings the eye of storms directly overhead, aren't we lucky!

Our language for all these patterns take into account the regularity by which they occur. Our insight is gained through annual experience that helps us communicate to newcomers the after effects of even a mild storm. In ancient times and maybe even for some today calamitous weather events were and are attributed to the wrath of God. This was done as a practical matter to explain away disruptive life altering changes. Any kind of divine reasoning behind why it all happens has really got holes in it. If there is a God i don't think he would regularly batter places like Haiti, making their lives that much more difficult. You might think God is doing you wrong but the odds are its the annual weather pattens and your ability to withstand its effects that are doing you wrong. Negative things happen to every human alive on this earth, no one is singling any of us out.

Run off at Cane Bay

Tropical Storm Irene  had been slowly building all day Sunday, dark skies, squalls, wind shifts and the ocean build up. She really started her visit around 2:00pm Sunday afternoon with heavy rain and winds; by 6:00pm we were all feeling the eye for about an hour and knew the worst was yet to come. Typically the back side of storms tend to be more damaging and i've never figured out exactly why that is. After the eye passed the winds picked up so we put up a few panels on the north side of the house and basically left the rest exposed. The power went out about 8:00pm and we were plunged into darkness. Not wanting to turn the generator on we lit the kerosene lamps, stayed up for another hour and went to bed for a fitful nights sleep.

Flooding

Irene was very kind to us...she decided to grow into a Level One Hurricane while passing us by and up here on the hill we probably only had gusts of about 75k. Which when you think about Hugo and its 200k was a blessing.

Tree damage was mild, we only lost some limbs off the Flamboyant  and Turpentine trees plus two of our banana trees were uprooted. The Avocado tree dropped small avocados that only filled half a bucket while most stayed on the tree. Otherwise the most annoying part of Irene is the lack of power.

Irene

We have been on the generator since Sunday. They say it may come on today but i've heard a transformer blew on our hill, i've also heard an electrical wire is rubbed off and that is what is delaying our section being turned on. Who knows, but i can tell you if we follow the regular pattern we will be the last to be turned on.

The phone works but the cell phone is still down. Rumor has it that AT&T lost 6 towers, if it is true it explains why i can't get any bars on my cell anywhere on the island.  i already have bad service so this doesn't bode well.

All in all Irene spared us her rath. i hope those further north are spared as well.

See ya next week.