So this is it.

I'm booked on one of the "extra sections" that Cayman Airways is flying to Miami tonight at 7:40pm. I'll get to Miami close to 10:00 and then tomorrow morning I can start looking for a way to get to Vancouver that won't cost me an arm,leg, my xbox and my firstborn male child.

Worst case I park my luggage in the storage area and go sack out in a pew in the chapel up on the 4th floor by the post office. It's always dark, quiet and air conditioned in there.

It isn't exactly how I pictured leaving Cayman, especially after 10 years, but I really have no good reason to stick around. If I did, I'd have to sit here in the dark, sweating my sac off with no air conditioning and maybe even no water, if the power and water are off. It's also costing me more to do all this last-minute stuff, but whatever... better than sweating it.

Unless I feel the need to post from the departure lounge at the airport, this will be my last post from Grand Cayman as a resident and local living urban legend. :)

I woke up this morning at 6am. I don't know why... I never woke up this early when I was, you know, WORKING. I checked the NHC overnights before doing anything else and WHAT THE?!

Gustav went SOUTHWEST overnight and was 'rounding the SE corner of Jamaica and then... headed right for us. Christ on a pogo stick, there goes my flight for Saturday! I checked the CPA at Stormcarib (really the only reason to go there, all the self-professed experts who post in their not-so-humble-opinions get on my nerves faster than... well faster than a fucking hurricane can change it's course while you're sleeping!) and it's now forecast to pass within 9.0 miles of Grand Cayman on Saturday August 30th at 2:12amEDT (0112 local)

That's too close. Plus with the southern pass, we're going to get the brunt of the NW and NE quadrants as well as be susceptible to storm surge, which is really the killer in hurricanes. Fortunately it's only supposed to be a cat1 and become a cat2 once it passes us and heads into the Gulf of Mexico (and aiming for New Orleans). It strengthened pretty quick overnight, so it could be a cat 2 or even higher by the time it arrives early Saturday.

People are getting into busy mode, traffic is terrible especially the chokepoint between the airport and the rest of GT. Boards are up all over and the supermarkets are packed. I think as people woke up this morning and saw the change in track it spurred them out of "we should be ok" to "we need to make damned sure we're ready" so all the ants are hard at work, while the grasshoppers are laying on the beach.

Update: I spoke too soon. Watches will go up on all three islands at 6pm local time today.

It sure seems the 5PM EDT update didn't do us any favors. Closest point of approach is now 73.8 miles on Friday at 5pm. Grand Cayman is well within the tropical storm force wind "cone of death" and brushing the hurricane force wind field based on the updated tracking map at the Naval Research Monterey map. That means we'll have sustained winds up to 74mph with higher gusts. Not bad, but not good, either. Gustav is forecast to be transitioning from a cat2  to a cat3 around that same time, so looks like a shitty Friday night in Little Cayman and Cayman Brac.

Saturday the airport should be back to normal, including my flight that's taking me from Grand Cayman to Houston... with Gustav heading from here into the Gulf of Mexico, I can see the flight being delayed, and then delaying me into Vancouver (again) because it has to go arouuund Gustav churning away in the gulf. I hope they don't just cancel it outright though, that would really suck (for me)

I sent home my second trunk this morning via FedEx. 68lbs at International Air Priority rate to zone D. ouch. Tomorrow I'll send the Drobo (minus the drives) and perhaps a suitcase, too. If I have to start jockeying around and changing flight plans on the fly, I don't want to get dinged for excess baggage at every stop.

W.T.F.

I have four more sleeps to go, my flight is booked for Saturday, August 30th at 4:45 PM. Hurricane Gustav is now expected to pass nearby sometime between Friday 2am and Saturday 2an. One model has it going south of us, the other five are varied but with two passing between here and Little Cayman and two between Cayman Brac and Cuba.

The page that shows all the models shows the intensity forecast and takes it up above 105mph at 96 hours and the discussion page/forecast at the NHC's site says:

MOST INDICATIONS ARE THAT GUSTAV WILL BE
AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS HURRICANE IN THE NORTHWESTERN CARIBBEAN SEA
IN A FEW DAYS. 

Wonderful. Extremely dangerous is about as high as you can get. I think I read somewhere one time that category 3 was "dangerous', category 4 was "extremely dangerous" and cat5 is "catastrophic" so if I'm right and it's expected to be a dangerous hurricane in the northwestern Caribbean sea on Friday, that means we're going to get a lot of weather.

Of course, tempering that doom and gloom is the fact that hurricanes are completely random. When Ivan brushed past in 2004 (the eye never crossed land in the Cayman Islands, but rather passed less than 20 mines southwest) it was officially a category 4 with official winds of 154mph. Those officials weren't here though and 154 was their best guess. There were gusts over 200mph. Storm surge completely inundated the island and most trees were completely stripped of branches and coconuts, along with a lot of roofs. Compared to Hurricane Dean last year which also wavered between a category 4 and 5 as it approached us directly, then turned more west and went south of us spared us a lot of damage. Once the craziness of the airport was dealt with I went home to wait it out and nothing happened. Nothing major, anyway.

Judging by the map at the NRL Monterey Marine Meteorology Division's map, as of the most current update, Grand Cayman is going to be spared the hurricane-force winds and almost all of the tropical storm force winds. That doesn't mean we won't have "large battering waves" or storm surge encroachment and massive amounts of rain, but it also means the sustained winds will be less than 35mph with higher gusts.

Nothing to do at this point but to go about normal life and continue packing. Fortunately my clothes are going in Space Bags which are heavy ziplocs with airlocks and my trunk is mostly waterproof but will definitely float. Once the alert gets issued, watches and warnings go up there will be more to do (shutters, provisions, etc) but for now, hurry up and wait.

Out and about (oot and aboot.. I gotta practice my Canadian accent, I'll be back in the great white north in two weeks!) today you would be shocked to think that there was a Tropical Storm Watch in effect. I was sitting at Paperman's Coffee House at the Strand with Lee talking about it. One thought that occurred to me was if this storm is less than 36 hours away, and it was as bright and sunny and cloud-free, blue-skied as it was today... how much (or rather) how little time did people have to prepare back in the old days before radios, telephones, radar and satelite imagery?

Tonight at the 1900Z update, the Gov't of the Cayman Islands upgraded the threat to a Tropical Storm Warning for Little Cayman and Cayman Brac, and kept Grand Cayman at a hurricane watch. That may or may not change overnight as the hurricane moves sort-of towards us.

In the forecast, it called for four to eight inches of rain over Hispaniola, Eastern and Central Cuba, Jamaica and the northern Cayman Islands with isolated areas of up to 15 inches. That's a lot of rain! Fortunately for the Cayman Islands, their topography is akin to a billiards table, but in Hispaniola, Jamaica and Cuba they have mountains, so that could lead to flash floods and mudslides (and not the cool creamy yummy kind that you can make with a Margaritaville Frozen Drink Maker... which I bought from SkyMall and is waiting to be picked up in Sumas WA when I get home! :) :) ). As of the last NHC update, they measured TS force winds extending out up to 105 miles from the center. That last update's forecast co-ordinates also calculate the closest point of approach to Grand Cayman of 179 miles, so while it will be breezy, we probably won't get 35mph+ Tropical Storm force winds.

On CaymanPrepared.ky (which they finally got around to updating today... is it just me or is it just bad form and laziness when you post on the site that the next update will be at 7am, but then don't actually change anything until after noon?) they're saying:

Additionally the Cayman area can strong north to northeast winds of 15 to 20 knots tonight, 20 to 25 knots tomorrow, leading to very rough seas with wave heights of 6 to 8 feet, especially near the Sister Islands.

Aside from the missing word there between can and strong (which I assume should be 'expect') it says we're going to get N-NE winds 20-25 knots tomorrow. What does that mean? It means that on my second-to-last weekend in the Cayman Islands, I'm not going to get to go diving. Again. Last week got washed out due to a hangover (not mine, my buddy's) and this week due to Fay.

I guess this just means I'll have to call in sick one morning and go for a dive once the weather clears :D

This morning while I was at Vespa Church at Paperman's Coffee House at the Strand, the Cayman Islands NHC issued a tropical storm watch for Grand Cayman. That means we could get TS conditions within 36 hours. We're on standby at work, waiting to see what happens over the next 12-24 hours to see what develops. As it stands, we're going to be far enough away to avoid pretty much everything except shitty weather for a few days and maybe some high seas and waves for a day or so. More to come...

Sent from my BlackBerryR wireless device from Cable & Wireless bMobile

it's 7am, the closest point of approach isn't for another two hours, but I don't think it's going to get much worse than this. I woke up at 5 to thunder, lightning and pounding rain, but now it's mostly just windy. I would venture a guess (without getting out of bed and going outside) to be 40-50mph winds.

I took a 10 second video clip just for you, Derek, but it's pretty lame, so I didn't upload it anywhere :) the trees are doing aerobics, but they're green leafy trees, not palm trees.

I've opened the blinds now, so I'm laying in bed watching the tops of the trees bob around. It should continue to get worse until about 9am and then start slacking off til about 5 or 6 tonight. As it swings past us and the winds shift around to the south, the waves will start to pound the south coast and the southern-facing West Bay peninsula which is where I live, but I'm inland.

If you want to look on Google Earth, the coordinates of the trees I'm looking at is in the kmz file attached below. From there you can poke around the rest of Cayman seeing where things are in relation to where I am.

It's midnight now. Water is off, power is on. I went outside to take a whizz (no flushing toilets, it's good to be a member of NO MA'AM sometimes.) and check on the conditions a little while ago and get this: the sky is clear and there are lots of stars out. Every now and then you could see a lightning flash wayyyyyyy far away but so far away that you can only make out what general direction it's coming from.

It's windy outside, but not terrible or anything, yet. Trees are moving, bushes are rustling and my anemometer is spinning around much like I'm sure John's bed is now after he drank a whole bottle of red wine on his own and then decided it would be a good idea to open the new bottle of Jack Daniels :)

I'm exhausted from all the work over the past few days, so I'm going to sign off here for the night and get some sleep. If the shit hits the fan in the middle of the night, I'll post it here when I get a chance, but I have a feeling the next post is going to be something like "it's 11:00am, I just woke up and according to the storm track, it's as close as it's going to get. I'll be back in awhile after I go cook some breakfast" or something like that.

It's dark out, and the lights are on still, so the only thing you'd see in the window pane is the reflection of "300", The Transformers, Oceans 13, or whatever else John picked up at the little pirate movie shop down at the corner.

I did set up the Weather Jeep earlier, but I had it mounted 90 degrees off, and because it's in the courtyard of our apartment complex, it mostly spun in circles, but the speed reading was about right. Pressure, temperature and humidity were more or less accurate as well. The batteries are probably low in it and the wireless signal was a bit weak, but it works. I plugged it in to my desktop computer (it's old and only has a serial connection, rather than USB) and wondered if the software would with Windows Vista, and it did, sort of.

The interface software worked, but the jpg creation/web wasn't talking to the interface software. I dowloaded the upgrades and then NOTHIN worked! :) I played with it for a few hours and then said fuck it. :) I have the receiver/display unit, so I'll post data based on that, it just won't be automated.

caymanprepared.ky had a press release saying that Cayman Water Company was waiting until the 4:00 NHC meeting to decide what they were doing. After that they decided to cut the water off at 9:00. I had already taken a nice long hot shower and then filled the tub. Nothing about CUC proactively turning off the power though.

Right now they're expecting 60-70mph sustained winds, and 1-2 inches of rain between 2am tonight and 5pm tomorrow. By then the winds should drop below the 35mph tropical storm threshold. I think what's going to happen is I'm going to wake up tomorrow, after sleeping in, look out the window and say "Shit I missed it!"

From the NHC:

HURRICANE FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 60 MILES...95 KM...FROM THE CENTER...AND TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 205 MILES...335 KM.

From Stormcarib's "How Close Can It Get?" applet:

Results for Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands (19.28N, 81.35W):
The approximate Closest Point of Approach (CPA) is located near 18.4N, 81.6W or about 63.7 miles (102.4 km) from your location. The estimated time of when the center of the storm will be at that location is in about 25.3 hours (Monday, August 20 at 12:18PM EDT).

I guess that's like being strapped down to a table while someone holds a circular saw 1/4" away from your face... you're going to feel it, but you're not going to get hurt by it. Or so the thought goes. A lot of people are perkier today thinking that we might be spared completely, but the tropical storm force winds extend out 205 miles, so that's a storm diameter of 410 miles. At 18mph, that means from the time we start feeling the effect to the time that it clears up again is 22 hours at up to almost hurricane strength winds, with of course higher gusts. Storm surge is also a concern, the last update says seven to nine feet so if we're right at the edge of the hurricane wind field, we should have minimal surge, but still pretty massive wave action.

Of course, it could wobble close enough to throw the entire previous parargraph to the wind (haa, I'm funny, I know) and bring that buzzsaw ashore here in Grand Cayman.

What is it about hurricanes that makes me quote Jack Burton so much?

Hurricane Warning has been issued for the Cayman Islands which means we can start feeling hurricane-force winds within 24 hours.

Game on.

We're still under a watch, it'll be updated to a warning overnight because it's expected to hit early Monday morning. There's not much to post, there's only so much weather channel and NHC NOAA web pages you can read. They're all the same. Impending doom. I was looking for a picture of the clock in the Harry Potter books that points to MORTAL PERIL but I'm so friggin tired I just can't be arsed at the moment.

I went by the airport today... holy sheetrock! Probably not the best week to stop sniffing glue if you're an ATC operator. There was a steady stream of planes, jets, private jets and corporate jets coming and going and going and coming all day long. There was a press release this morning announcing six more flights from Little Cayman to Cayman Brac and later I read a press release saying that the Governor had ordered the complete evacuation of Little Cayman by tomorrow noon.

Last night there was a press release from Cayman Airways listing six extra flights to Miami today, from 0100 last night all the way through to 0150 tonight, three to Fort Lauderdale, one more to Kingston (why you'd want to head IN to the storm, I don't know), an extra jet to/from Cayman Brac and six flights from Little Cayman.

At the bottom of the press release was flights under "Sunday 19th" but really that's still tonight for the poor people who are at work checking people in for the flights instead of at home preparing for the shitstorm. 0100, 0950 to Miami, 0700 to Tampa and 1230 to New York.

The Gov has enacted the Emergency Powers Law, so starting tomorrow evening there's a curfew and "I can reassure the community that the RCIPS is fully mobilised and there will be a strong police presence in all the districts during and after the storm. Should they be needed additional law enforcement reinforcements from outside Cayman are on standby."

I stopped by The Strand this morning to grab a coffee at Paperman's on my way in to work (and I'm still there 13 hours later and counting) and the dentist's office a few doors down had a sheet of paper on the door that said "Attention looters: there are no drugs or cash on these premises, thanks" hehe! I took a picture of it with my phone, but I don't think it turned out too well.

Update Holy shinto! Another press release from Cayman Airways with more flights! 2230 tonight, 0110, 0450 and 1150 to Miami. I don't think I've ever seen this many extra flights from Cayman Airways in any of the previous hurricane evacs I've seen since I moved down here. Maybe AFTER Ivan, taking people out and bringing supplies in, but wow.. that's like, an extra 450 people.

I've added my cell phone number to my contact info on my Facebook Profile. Those of you who really know me well know what a shock that is, as I'm usually very private about telephone numbers.

When cell networks are swamped it sometimes takes 20-30 tries to get a call through, and even then voice quality suffers.

What can you do about that? Use SMS.

SMS doesn't put nearly the load on the cell switches and system that voice calls do and they are queued for delivery, so it will keep trying on your behalf so you don't have to.

I thank you in advance everyone who says be safe, good luck and those sorts of sentiments, however PLEASE do not inundate my SMS inbox with those types of messages. Write them here on my wall or leave a comment on one of the posts over at www.docjely.com and I'll get them when I get back online.

SMS is going to be my primary mode of communications for the next few days, and if you're trying to reach other people in the Cayman Islands, I urge you to use SMS rather than voice.

If you're like me and a cheap bastard, go to http://www.cw.ky/internet/products/mobile-services/data-services/text-messaging/send-a-text-message.php and use their web interface. It's free and doesn't cost you a thing, however it will come from +555 so make sure you leave room to sign your name

Emails sent to 345XXXYYYY@cwmobile.com will also be forwarded via SMS to the  number where XXXYYYY is, so keep it under 160 characters or it will get truncated.

Be safe and we'll talk to you next week
-M

Main email: mark at docjelly.com
ICQ: 1656823
MSN: kmancowboy at hotmail.com
Y!: docjelly or markfaccin
GoogleTalk: mfaccin
AIM: Docjelly73
BB Messenger PIN: 20623D4C

In a field one summer's day a Grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing to its heart's content. An Ant passed by, bearing along with great toil an ear of corn he was taking to the nest.
     "Why not come and chat with me," said the Grasshopper, "instead of toiling and moiling in that way?"
     "I am helping to lay up food for the winter," said the Ant, "and recommend you to do the same."
     "Why bother about winter?" said the Grasshopper; "We have got plenty of food at present." But the Ant went on its way and continued its toil.
     When the winter came the Grasshopper had no food and found itself dying of hunger - while it saw the ants distributing every day corn and grain from the stores they had collected in the summer. Then the Grasshopper knew: It is best to prepare for days of need.

Nothing much to report yet. Gov't hasn't even issued an alert yet, which means 72 hours stand-to, then a tropical storm watch, which means TS conditions COULD be felt within 36 hours (or maybe 48, but I'm pretty sure it's 36) and then a TS warning which means TS conditions WILL be felt within 24 hours. Sometimes they double them up and issue a tropical storm warning AND a hurricane watch at the same time. Hurricane warning is like when the sirens go off in the midwest. A twister has been spotted, take cover NOW. Hurricane warning means you have 24 hours or less until the effects are felt, but that also means you'll be in the middle of Tropical Storm-force conditions.

Plans have been set in motion both at home and at work. I'm anticipating a lot of hours this weekend, whether I'm at work or not! I don't want to sound too cavalier, but I don't think we're going to do too badly with this storm. Hopefully those don't become 'famous last words' because there's the potential for this to truly be a shitstorm of magnificent proportions. Preparing for the worst and hoping for the best is the mode of operation this weekend.

Tomorrow, or maybe even early this morning the gov't will issue the alert, and then start to progress through the watches and warnings based upon the actual track of the storm. I'll update the little flag up in the corner as they're released.

On a completely different note, the sky was brilliantly lit up by stars tonight. There's still a lot of light pollution just from the fact that people live here, but you could clearly see the Milky Way tonight. The nights AFTER Ivan, before a lot of people started firing up generators and turning lights back on was by far the prettiest nights for stargazing I've *EVER* seen, period.

"Stan's Uncle Jimbo and his war buddy Ned take Stan, Kenny, Kyle, and Cartman on a hunting trip in the mountains. When they arrive in the wilderness (just outside of South Park), Jimbo gives each of the boys a gun (Kyle, Stan, and Kenny get shotguns while Cartman receives an assault rifle), a can of beer, and a pack of cigarettes, and the hunting festivities begin.

It soon becomes apparent that Jimbo and Ned's idea of hunting is to slaughter every living thing in sight via military weaponry. They get around the regulations by yelling "It's coming right for us!" in order to exploit the loophole that they can kill any animal in self-defense. Stan proves to not have the proper temperament to enjoy hunting (or at least Jimbo and Ned's idea of hunting), and finds himself unable to shoot a living target when provided the opportunity. While hunting the boys realize that one of the nearby mountains is rumbling, a fact Ned and Jimbo ignore until it is too late." from Wikipedia

This is EXACTLY the picture I was looking for to go along with the "it's coming right for us!" exclamation. Two days ago, TD#4 was renamed Tropical Storm Dean. That was when the phone started ringing. As of this morning it's "dipped" south a bit and is now forecast to come into the Caribbean Basin. We don't like dipping. That's what Ivan did to go around Jamaica in '04 and smack us upside the head.

Since this is the first threat (real or otherwise) of the year that's even remotely going to affect us, people are a bit jumpy and starting to breath down our necks to put our hurricane/disaster recovery plan into standby. The phrase 'two monkeys fucking a football' comes to mind.. a whole lot of action and not a lot of results. Of course I could be wrong, it HAS happened once or twice in the past 34 years so we're going to use this as a dry-run to test out some of the new things we've added this year and practice the things we've been doing for the last few years.

As usual, I'll be posting up progress and notes and things here, as I do. I've actually got around to adding all the bookmarks for weather sites that I reference on Del.icio.us and added the RSS feed to my OPML list over on the bottom right. If you subscribe to the list, you'll get new sites as I remember them and add them. The tag on Del.icio.us is hurricane weather and maps.

It will be December 1st, 2006.

Big deal? Maybe. It means that the 2006 Atlantic Hurricane Season is officially over! Now I can force myself to eat all the crap canned stuff that I have squirreled away that I wouldn't normally eat unless I HAD to. Sure it's probably good for another year, but in the aftermath of a hurricane when there's no power and no water is NOT the time to eat a can of bad chili, if you know what I'm talking about (and I think you do!)

Of course, Mother Nature doesn't really pay too much attention to our calendars, but for all intensive purposes (ha! I know what it should be, for all intents and purposes, but "all intensive purposes" is one of my all-time pet peeves and if Google indexes this and people hit up on it maybe they'll friggin learn something) this hurricane season is over.

Let's recap... We had one Hurricane Alert this year, and that was Hurricane Ernesto. Fortunately, he took a "right turn, Clyde" and went up the far side of Jamaica instead (watch the animated gif here) and got knocked the fuggout! There were a few other named storms this year, all the way through to Isaac ("Heyyyyy what's happenin?") A far cry from last year's Tropical Storm Zeta!

Before you know it, it'll be June 1st, 2007 and we'll be stocking the storm box again for another year

Yesterday afternoon I was at work for a meeting of the hurricane commitee and at the end of it, just as it was wrapping up, someone went and checked NOAA for the update and it showed that Ernesto was going to jog north instead. That put us on the very southern edge of the projected path (the Cone Of Death as I've been calling it the last few years) and even pulled away from the Sister Islands (Cayman Brac & Little Cayman). It stayed about that way until this morning.

I slept in this morning, and just got up about a half hour ago and checked this morning's updates and theynow show Ernesto hooking way north, cutting across Cuba, skirting Key West and then hooking around to the NE and heading ashore near Tampa Bay. Of course, that's the 5-day forecast, and the further away you get from NOW, the larger the room for error is. In any case, Grand Cayman is out of the projected path and Cayman Brac is barely within the 3-day cone of death. There should be an update posted by NOAA right about now, so I'll check that when I'm done here.

The webcam is offline now, but the last image uploaded to the web server was from 9:55am this morning showing another beautiful sunny day with blue skies. I guess all the clouds and weather ar getting sucked towards Ernesto, leaving nothing but a breeze and good weather for us.

I've got my webcam up and pointing out the window. It's not the best view right now, I need to fid something taller to put it on so the bars of the balcoy aren't obscuring the camera, and it's a bit washed out as the sun is going down, facing the camera, AND there's some window tint on the door that it's behind.

It refreshes every minute or so, but to refresh your view, you have to hit refresh (F5). If you want to link directly to it, it's http://docjelly.is-a-geek.org/ww.jpg

Update: Since Ernesto doesn't realistically pose a threat to us anymore, im taking the webcam offline. If he should radically change course and come this way again, I'll put it back up.

After about noon today, activity picked up around the island. I popped in to Foster's by the airport and there was just a mess. Cars, people, everywhere. I thought for sure it would be until tonight or tomorrow that everything started getting really busy and shelves started getting empty. People were buying all kinds of things... As far as we knew this morning, we would start getting Tropical Storm force winds sometime in the early AM hours of Monday, and maybe hurricane force winds Monday late morning and then they should start to disspate after 1pm or so. Four hours of potential hurricane-force winds. Compared to the 36+ hours that we got uor collective asses kicked by Ivan two years ago, it's "Just a walk in the park, Cougar."

That said, I'm expecting the opwer to go out at some point Sunday night and be out for maybe twelve hours at the longest. Not a big deal, especially since I plan to be asleep for most of it (Monday's more than likely going to be a "snow day") I picked up a few things today, some water, a box of granola bars, that sort of thing. I'll probably head out to the warehouse tonight and rescue my hurricane supply locker. Not so much that I'll need all the stuff in there (solar shower, a week's supply of gelled cooknig fuel, water purification and such) but if we do get hit harder than we're expecting, I don't want someone else to 'recover' it before I can get out there.

As of the 4pm update, they've actually moved the track more to the north and now she's forecast to pass between here and Cayman Brac on Monday instead of passing directly over us. Next update will be around 10pm tonight, so as long as I'm not flat on my beak drunk, I'll post up something then.

It rained hard again last night. I rolled out of the sack at 8:00 this morning when Seb called me to remind me that the England/Paraguay game was on and he was over at Legendz waiting for me. I threw on some clothes and a rain jacket and staggered over there to watch the game and have some breakfast. Seb saved me a seat right in front of the projector screen. Eleni and her friend who's visiting was there, as was her co-worker Jim and his wife Julie. Mmm Mmm pancakes... but that's another post.

I checked the weather before I left and there she was: Tropical Depression #1. She could strengthen and become Arlene some time tonight or tomorrow as she heads for Florida.

On the way over, I saw that there were some palm fronds/branches down on the road, a couple Foster's Food Fair shopping carts had blown over/around and the an information booth/umbrella was laying on it's side in the middle of the parking lot in the Cayman Falls shopping center. It was breezy, but it wasn't raining.

During the game, it rained like a sonofagun, but of course we didn't know because we were inside in front of a 100 inch screen. When the game was over, I walked home and it was lightly raining but shortly after that the sun peeked out from behind the clouds. I had sent an IM to someone saying "well so much for the Ark, the sun's come out" and before he could respond, I heard rain start drumming on the roof.

According to this morning's NOAA Atlantic Weather Outlook, Grand Cayman received 22 inches of rain in the previous 24 hours. TWENTY TWO INCHES. That's nearly two feet! in 24 hours! That's almost as much action as Jack Bauer sees in a day!

This afternoon I took the Jeep out and ran around and did errands, picked up drycleaning etc and stopped by AL Thompsons (Home Depot-type) and picked up some hardware so I can finally get around to mounting my weather station. As of now, temp, humidity and rainfall sensors are set up on the balcony and transmitting to the base station here which is plugged into my desktop computer. Over the next few days I'll get it set up so that it's dumping it's data to the interwebs and I'll post up some data/URLs to check it out.

Tonight the moon is out, clouds are skittering across the sky and there was some distant lightning flashing from the south. Im sure it'll change in the next five minutes though :)

It's June 3rd. THREE DAYS since the start of Hurricane Season '06. No, wait... less than 72 hours... They're already up to Tropical Depression #2 in the Eastern Pacific. TD#2 is just off the coast of Mexico, south of Acapulco and heading north. Fortunately, the NHC doesn't think there's going to be much, if any chance of it developing into anything. ANd what's with the name anyway? Tropical Depression? WTF? It sounds like something you get when you've lived here too long (cough)

This past week has brought some rain here, finally. If I had a garden, I'd be happy for the rain, but I dont. I have a scooter. Rain sucks. I've had to upgrade my rain protection that I carry around with me after getting caught in a deluge on Wednesday. Then I had to bag-up before riding home on Thursday and then again on Friday, too.

I slept in this morning. Bliss... I layed in bed with a cup of tea and watched a few episodes of Good Eats, and then two episodes of The Sopranos. I finally rolled out of the sack around 12:45pm, only because Seb called and I met up with everyone for lunch at PD's. Mmmmm pulled pork sandwich. Anyway, a thunderstorm rolled in while I was watching TV, so I shut everything down, rolled over and spent about 30 minutes just watching the rain come down. Awesome... Tomorrow will be another sleep-in day and then maybe some breakfast. I think we make break the chain tomorrow due to the weather. Every Sunday for the last three months or so we've filled the cooler with cold beer and sat on the beach and chilled out. Tomorrow's forecast is calling for 27kt winds! Woo! should be fun to watch, but remember that 35kt sustained winds are Tropical Storm force.

Today is the first day of the rest of your life! OK, maybe not the rest of your life, but at least the first day of Hurricane Season 2006. NOAA is predicting a busier than usual season this year. Great.

For those of you who want to get your RSS freak on, NOAA's NHC has some RSS feeds that will tell you when any new bulletins are posted, as well as storm-specific feeds once a storm has been established.

You're supposed to have your preparations ready by today, but even with the heightened awareness of hurricane season, and the fact that TS Arlene came through this area in June of last year, I haven't really dont much this year. I picked up some water that was on sale this week, and this weekend I'll go out to the storage unit and inventory all the supplies and make a list of what I still need for this year and slowly start topping things up as I go. That way it's not all on one pay cycle and I don't have to go last-second shopping with the other 40,000 people and fight over the last cans of crap that are left.

What I haven't figured out yet is where to stash my Vespa, but I'll figure something out before the first alert, if we even have any this year (Shyeah! right!)

What a nice surprise this morning to see that the deep blue sea has returned, instead of being all white and frothy. There are still some rollers coming in, but they're breaking offshore and you can actually see mooring balls now. Further down the beach closer to George Town there's some breakers still but she's really calmed down now in the last 12 or so hours. Another day or so and Seven Mile Beach will be back in shape and calm, warm and crystal clear for snorkelling. Without the waves, the beach boats will be able to come in and pick up divers and things will get back to normal after a few “snow days“ of no diving.

The big story now are the grocery stores. It's been too rough for any container ships to dock in George Town, so they're starting to run low on perishables and some of the shelves are looking rather empty. I wish I had time to stop this morning and take a picture of the produce section of Foster's at the Strand, it looks more like a produce display rack showroom! They have little signs on all the racks and shelves saying that some items are running low because they haven't been able to resupply because of the weather, but that starting Tuesday they'll be airlifting in some perishables (bread and milk most likely). That's gotta be hella expensive for the grocers to do that, but to their credit, everytime it's happened before where we can't get ships in because of weather, all the prices have stayed the same.

On another note, this is a good thing to keep in the back of your head. When trying to reach someone in a disaster area, or after a hurricane, earthquake, Backstreet Boys CD signing appearance or whatnot, use SMS. SMS hasn't really caught on as much in North America as it has in Europe or Asia so you may not even know what it is. SMS is like email, you can send Short Messages (the SM of SMS) from handset to handset. It's a lot less 'strain' on a cellular switch than a voice call is, so chances are it will go through quicker than if you tried to call and call and call and call. Most providers have a web interface to send SMS messages through as well, such as this one from Cable & Wireless (Cayman).

My friend Shannon lives in Ft Lauderdale and told me beforehand that they didn't have a generator this time. Rather than waste my time trying to get through to her yesterday and if I did, chewing up her battery and if not, chewing up her battery while she checks her voicemail, I sent her an SMS message. That message popped up next time she turned her phone on, and she replied and told me she was ok without having to sacrifice any precious talk-time on her cell's battery. Now that I know she's OK, I won't sit here and nervously hit “Send/Receive“ every two minutes looking for an email saying she's OK. The other thing you can do is make sure you have a solar cell phone charger handy for times when there's no power, especially if you live somewhere where it's usually pretty sunny (so that kinda rules out Canada, but hey, very few natural disasters in God's Country, right Gramma?)

Along with the website outage I had yesterday due to hardware at the server end in Vancouver, we've been having problems with internet connectivity period down here. Wednesday night (when Wilma was making her closest brush to Cayman) Nat called me and was having trouble with DNS resolution (that's what happens when you type in www.docjelly.com and the network says “oh yeah, docjelly.com, here it's 216.whatever.whatever.whatever” and connects you to it). Since then, the internet has been up and down and up and down. When it's up, it's slow. When it's down, it's down.

People have been calling me non-stop for the last few days asking if I could come “fix” their internet connection and I've had to try and explain that it wasn't anything that I could fix, that it was a problem with Cable & Wireless. “But I have a cable modem from WestTel!” Yeah well, then I have to explain that Cable & Wireless owns the fiber that goes off the island, so any other ISPs that pop up still have to lease circuits fro C&W, so in effect they still have a monopoly, even though it was “dissolved” very publicly over the last couple years.

I started to wonder if something happened to the submarine fiber optic cable, since it got washed ashore during Hurricane Ivan last year. I didn't know where the other end of it went until today. There are three links: one from here to Cayman Brac, one from Cayman Brac to Jamaica (and from there I don't know where it goes) and then the other side of the link goes from Grand Cayman to.... Cancun! Yeah, Cancun. So that link has been knocked offline and the entire IP infrastructure for the Cayman Islands is now travelling over the backup link from here to Jamaica. So while we DO have connectivity, the speed of it is waaaaaay down. No real sense of when it can be repaired, either. Im guessing they havent even got anyone on-site that can assess the damage, nevermind when it can get fixed and put back online.

Bunch of arse.