BVI - Hurricane Omar
We all hear about people wanting to 'experience' a hurricane....and living in the Caribbean seems like a good place to start? Hurricane season starts around June/July and extends into November each year. Storm strengths can vary hugely starting at Tropical Depressions, developing into Tropical Stroms and then into full blown Hurricanes. They start at Category 1 and go up to Cat 5. Small ones are more like a winters day in Scotland, but without the cold and the sleet, scaling up to a full Cat 5 with winds in excess of 156mph. Anyway, it was just a matter of time before we got our first hit in the BVIs, the first big one in about 10 years. Here's what happened.....
12th October 2008: we'd been watching the hurricane web sites for a few days now. Nothing off to the East - a good sign as that's where the storms usually start to develop just off the African coast and then slowly build up as they hit the warmer waters of the Caribbean. Cool, we thought all clear once again. Over the next two days however a smaller Tropical Depresion had started to form off to the South West - totally in the wrong direction for it to come our way - or so we thought!!! By the 14th, the depression had got itself together, was gathering strength and pace, together with falling pressure in the centre, and it was now heading out way!!! The internet is a great source of information and there is so much Hurricane archive info out there, that, coupled with spotter planes delivers fantastic predictive models showing the storm's direction and expected strength. Great....we now knew that we were to take a direct hit from Hurricane Omar, estimated at Catergory 3, that's sustained winds up to 130mph.
Omar was on track to hit us at night at around 00:00 to 03:00am, so we bunkered down awaiting the worse that nature could deliver. The previous four hours were spent in the bar at the Bath and Turtle with plenty of refreshments laid aside the in the fridge for the next few days.
The wind started to pick up at about 8pm, as we sat in wait for the equivalent of a fairly windy day in the West Coast of Scotland - the only difference being that the temperature was a bit warmer here in the BVIs. So off to bed at about 10pm a little worse for wear with the beers previously consumed. And then the rain started. The ground here was already saturated as it had been raining here for the last 4 days. The rain was torrential - solid and horizontal for some six hours. It would have been good to get a peek at Mother Nature in her destructive glory but unfortunately the power went out at midnight and then there was total darkness.
At its peak the winds thankfully only gusted up to about 80mph - at lot less than we had anticipated. We now know that the Omar took a lunge to the east at about 9pm which took the centre about 100 miles away from us and avoided what could have been a catastrophic night. Omar had got to a Category 3 as it left St Croix - that means sustained winds of up to 130mph!! As it turned out we got the fringes of the big stuff and the islands escaped very lightly. Unfortunately St Maartin got whacked unexpectedly.
The result..... the island looks like someone’s been out strimming everything, there are leaves, twigs and branches everywhere. We'd have to say that if that was the outer fringes of a Cat 3 then you certainly wouldn't want to be any closer to the centre. A close call. Bizarrely, the day after the storm was one of the best days in October, roasting hot and clear skies. The water and power came back on the next day and all was back to normal - it's as if it never happened.
Oh, by the way, we had an earthquake here five days ago too, 6.1 on the Richter Scale. It lasted over 10 seconds. I wonder what is going to happen next, plague of locusts? Probably, more like mosquitoes after all the rain..........
Read More12th October 2008: we'd been watching the hurricane web sites for a few days now. Nothing off to the East - a good sign as that's where the storms usually start to develop just off the African coast and then slowly build up as they hit the warmer waters of the Caribbean. Cool, we thought all clear once again. Over the next two days however a smaller Tropical Depresion had started to form off to the South West - totally in the wrong direction for it to come our way - or so we thought!!! By the 14th, the depression had got itself together, was gathering strength and pace, together with falling pressure in the centre, and it was now heading out way!!! The internet is a great source of information and there is so much Hurricane archive info out there, that, coupled with spotter planes delivers fantastic predictive models showing the storm's direction and expected strength. Great....we now knew that we were to take a direct hit from Hurricane Omar, estimated at Catergory 3, that's sustained winds up to 130mph.
Omar was on track to hit us at night at around 00:00 to 03:00am, so we bunkered down awaiting the worse that nature could deliver. The previous four hours were spent in the bar at the Bath and Turtle with plenty of refreshments laid aside the in the fridge for the next few days.
The wind started to pick up at about 8pm, as we sat in wait for the equivalent of a fairly windy day in the West Coast of Scotland - the only difference being that the temperature was a bit warmer here in the BVIs. So off to bed at about 10pm a little worse for wear with the beers previously consumed. And then the rain started. The ground here was already saturated as it had been raining here for the last 4 days. The rain was torrential - solid and horizontal for some six hours. It would have been good to get a peek at Mother Nature in her destructive glory but unfortunately the power went out at midnight and then there was total darkness.
At its peak the winds thankfully only gusted up to about 80mph - at lot less than we had anticipated. We now know that the Omar took a lunge to the east at about 9pm which took the centre about 100 miles away from us and avoided what could have been a catastrophic night. Omar had got to a Category 3 as it left St Croix - that means sustained winds of up to 130mph!! As it turned out we got the fringes of the big stuff and the islands escaped very lightly. Unfortunately St Maartin got whacked unexpectedly.
The result..... the island looks like someone’s been out strimming everything, there are leaves, twigs and branches everywhere. We'd have to say that if that was the outer fringes of a Cat 3 then you certainly wouldn't want to be any closer to the centre. A close call. Bizarrely, the day after the storm was one of the best days in October, roasting hot and clear skies. The water and power came back on the next day and all was back to normal - it's as if it never happened.
Oh, by the way, we had an earthquake here five days ago too, 6.1 on the Richter Scale. It lasted over 10 seconds. I wonder what is going to happen next, plague of locusts? Probably, more like mosquitoes after all the rain..........
