Invest 90 - Sub Tropical Storm Alberto

The  tropical disturbance over Belize and the Yucatan has been declared to be an Invest, Investment 90L to be precise which means not that it will became a hurricane though there is a 70 percent chance, but simply that the National Hurricane Center in Mia mi is interested in the formation's progress. Aren't we all if we live remotely close to its projected landfall?

Hurricane season starts June 1st officially and runs through November 30th in the Atlantic Basin so all this activity is a little early and coming on the heels of last year's Hurricane irma fiasco it is setting nerves to jangling in the Florida Keys. I was shopping in Publix yesterday and I overheard a (loud) conversation between two women discussing their hurricane preparations. They were lamenting their lack of preparedness for Hurricane Irma last September and are determined not to be caught out this season. And already with a previous tropical depression flooding the Keys with rain we have seen a  wet start to the summer.

The thing about the Western Caribbean is that it is a heat catchment area, the waters are shallower and the heat is intense early on in that area so hurricanes which need hot water to fuel their spiralling winds. 

So  hurricanes tend to form off the Central American coast early in hurricane season and late while the waters of the Atlantic spawn mid-season storms when the ocean is warmest.

Even though forecasters try to warn us of what's ahead they can only guesstimate numbers of storms not direction of travel or landfall, so even if there are an average number of storms, as they point out it only takes one to ruin your day. Hurricane Irma with its 140 mph winds has left a trail of damage that is taking a while to repair. there are hundreds of tarps still on roofs in the Lower Keys, not so much Key West but the islands between Sugarloaf and Big Pine. Reconstruction is still underway and insurance companies aren't helping when they contest every single claim.

A  lot of people lost their homes in Irma and many left the Keys. There is a shortage of labor already in the islands though rental prices keep rising and wages don't match the increased costs so there are more people leaving for that reason.Suddenly hurricane season has become real again and the prospect of more damage, more unpaid evacuations, more chaos is causing yet more people to rethink their idea of life in paradise and you can hardly blame them. 

It may be that all we get is a ruined Memorial Day with massive rain storms, and if that is all so much the better. And if one has to be laid flat by a disaster frankly I prefer hurricanes to fires, mudslides, lava flows and earthquakes. However hurricane season is an annual event and it is relentless. I would prefer not having to sit out another catastrophe, but this is the reality of life in the Keys from time to time.

Big Pine Key Post Irma

Work has begun 

So much work to do 

Irma And Smathers Beach

I went by the south side of Key West yesterday and saw the smelly chaos of seaweed thrown onto land to decompose. It too will be cleared even more thoroughly than it has been so far 

More Pictures of Irma

I have hundreds of pictures but battle fatigue does set in at some point. You keep seeing wreckage and it burns out your eyeballs. So I'll post as many pictures as the temporary cell phone service offers. As of today there is some electrical service in spots around Key West and some emergency medicine available at the ER but there is no running water or Internet service.  The highway is closed at Mile Marker 74 in Islamorada, consequently there is very little civiliantraffic on the roads or in the streets. There is a dawn to dusk curfew in the city of Key West. 

The Waiting Game

Will it? Won't it? Hurricane Irma is driving past the Virgin Islands, with the eye of the 185 mph storm some 40 miles north of St Thomas. Today it should brush Puerto Rico and Hispaniola then it will threaten the Turks and Caicos and the Bahamas. Because the Bermuda High is strong enough we could see weather coming this way if the major hurricane is forced far enough south, yet now there is a hint in the Hurricane Center forecast to indicate it could well miss Key West..

This is described as the largest most powerful storm to form in the relatively cool Atlantic Ocean waters and now it is scheduled to drive up the Old Bahama Channel, shallow and very warm waters which will feed the storm. Indeed it may drop to 140 miles per hour by the weekend but that will still make it a devastating Category Four storm. Right now, Wednesday morning it is a monstrous Category Five, as high as the scale goes. But the five day track shows the Upper Keys as the landfall, possibly  a hundred miles east of Key West.

It's been so long since a hurricane threatened and Florida has such a high population turn over there are many many people who have no idea what happens. And yet I have seen an encouraging number of people leaving and driving in good order up the Keys to escape. News that Irma is a category five with 185 mph winds has awoken many people to he idea that this storm is truly dangerous. 

My own response is to ignore the danger and just keep working at the daily tasks. Buttoning up the house is a step by step process with help from neighbors who themselves are all talking about leaving before Friday when the winds are expected to blow. Me? I am one of four dispatchers who will be working through the storm along with a few police officers who will keep the lights on at the police station. I appreciate the fact this is a deadly storm but the police station is designed to weather these conditions especially now that we might avoid a direct hit... and I expect we may end up a bit uncomfortable but   I doubt my life will be at risk. I shall post whatever I can here and at my Instagram and Facebook pages both under the name of Michael Conchscooter. If you want to watch this epic story fizzle one picture at a time.

So for now I go outdoors and look at the ocean and the check the Hurricane Center website obsessively and keep calculating the odds of not having to change my routines at all. Its very dreary and as  each day passes it seemed more obvious that Key West was in the cross hairs. I kept  hoping the  trough in the continental United States might suck the storm away from us and maybe it has. As for my family while you read this my wife has left in her Fiat 500 with a tank full of gas and a dog on the back seat. Someone asked my wife on Facebook if she was taking Rusty. Hurricanes produce all sorts of strange questions. I have no idea why anyone might imagine Rusty would not be taken care of. So I shall be alone until I report for work Thursday night and won't leave the police station until the all clear is sounded next week. 

The 911 lines tend to go quiet as people are busy preparing but the administrative lines light up. At Key West PD we answer both lines at the same desks, which can confuse callers when they dial 911 and ask for the police. "I am the police," I say and they don't believe me. I've already starting taking questions about the weather like I'm a forecaster or a prophet. I just read the weather off my phone like they should. Then they have questions about buses, where to get gas, shelters and so on. Hapily the emergency operations center for Monroe County has opened to answer these questions. We just take calls from people who need help, we have no particular information to share. When the storm gets close and they order us in and shut the doors time stands still. Whatever is outside is beyond reach and the world becomes an internet screen and a whirling mass of clouds slowly getting closer. 

It's been years since we've had to do this and I don't want to sleep on a  cot or shower like I was back in boarding school drying my hair as I walk past armed police and piles of sandwiches and the sounds of weather forecasters in the corridors. I'm not ready to wreck my routines to suit the convenience of a spinner called Irma. But it has come to that. Oh well.

Watching Hurricane Matthew

I have been following events in relation to Hurricane Matthew, across Florida as a large urban population with no experience of severe hurricanes comes to grips with the reality of hurricane season in the Sunshine State. I should say this whole Matthew drama has been bizarre right from the Caribbean where 17 people have died, and looks to continue in that vein as the storm moves north and changes its path all over the place.  We in Key West are outside the danger zone even though we expect steady winds of a mere 20 miles per hour today with heavy rain for accompaniment. So my observations come from a comfortable spot where life continues as normal. Weird but true- so far- life is uninterrupted in the Lower Keys.

It's been a long time since a major storm hit Florida and this is a state where people come and go, and from what I've heard grocery shelves are emptying and fights are breaking out at gas stations. It was nice knowing what to know what to do on Monday before the herd got spooked when we bought extra water and filled our vehicle's gas tanks as a precaution. We keep dehydrated food in the house for just these emergencies and so all that is left is to sit back and carry on carrying on. I have to say I am tired of hurricanes, and you'd think after a ten year break I'd have had time to get my resistance level back up to face more storms. But I'm not ready. It's not a matter of being afraid it's just a matter of being annoyed at the interruption of my daily routines. In the face of all the catastrophic destruction wrought by this storm my preoccupations seems embarrassingly banal. But that is the truth of this situation; you feel glad to be spared and embarrassed by your relief.

I'm better off than some people because I have been through this before, many times. This hurricane thing has knocked Monroe County's school superintendent for a loop, and its quite funny to watch. This poor guy has made it known he's applied for work to get the hell out of Monroe County and now he's stuck with dealing with half a storm, and it's clear he has no clue. He's the guy at Publix buying potato chips and red wine while forgetting batteries and  drinking water. The problem is that only half the Keys are currently under a tropical storm watch so the superintendent, in violation of normal practice and tried and tested tradition, decided to only close the schools actually affected by the weather. The unintended consequence of this bizarre decision is to throw the school calendar into chaos.  The school district is used to weather related closures, all schools are, not just for hurricanes but for blizzards forest fires or flooding, whatever your local natural disaster may be. So now some of the schools will use make up days at the end of the year and some won't which is causing the entire district to scratch their collective head figuring out how to manage this administrative cock up. All he had to do was close all schools for a day or two and add a day or two to the end of the school year exactly as anticipated. Which makes one really really glad the school board hired this unhappy man to lead the schools. I hope he makes another school district somewhere else very happy very soon.

When you tell people you live in Florida they get a rather negative stereotype in their heads of a retirement community of querulous old people driving badly and complaining about the cost of everything. Florida has tried to change this image of itself and has attracted some younger people tired of snow but a state terrified of raising taxes apparently cannot sustain world class educational opportunities and can't attract top flight business innovators judging by results so far. It's a shame because if you do find a place to live that you like and a job to sustain you, life in Florida is pretty sweet. Life in the Florida Keys is something else entirely, sweet yes, but a world apart from mainland Florida and in a  crisis like a major hurricane the differences become apparent. This photo of Costco crowds came from the British Sun newspaper which is apparently quite interested in our discomfort:

It may be partly owing to the smaller population in the Keys, 75,000 permanent residents, it may be that in these islands one lives closer to nature, but my observation is that the art of survival even in this modern age is better honed in the Keys than on the mainland. When asked I say I live in the Florida Keys to differentiate myself from the mainland, the world gored mercilessly by Carl Hiassen in his novels lampooning Florida. I saw how people coped most recently with the disaster that was Hurricane Wilma which flooded Key West in a way similar to New Orleans yet we saw no looting no violence no sudden expiration of neighborliness. I figured that if I had to live through a natural disaster this place was as good as any. And now that the rest of Florida all the way up the East Coast and around Lake Okeechobee faces a truly testing time we shall see how it goes for them. Perhaps they will exceed my rather low expectations. 

Feeling lucky to be outside the projected path of Hurricane Matthew is a temporary state of mind. If the storm wrecks Miami we lose our source of electricity and water as well as road access. If Matthew curls around as is projected for next week and comes back at Florida (!) out of the Atlantic for a second go, the Lower Keys could get raked. There are more weather systems building in the Atlantic, thus next time could be our turn; who knows...So it's never too early to stock up with supplies, too early to figure out your plan such that if the time comes you can act with confidence and come what may know you did your best.  

Just A Category One

Hurricane Hermine isn't over yet, but I wanted to record some thoughts about this tropical storm that skirted Key West bringing just rain and wind and struck the panhandle of Florida forcing storm surge into land. In Florida one homeless guy has been killed by a falling tree so as usual damage to property easily outweighs loss of life compared to earthquakes tornadoes and landslides. Cedar Key got a nice trashing from this "modest" hurricane:

I'm not in Cedar Key right now so I got these images from news outlets on the Internet and the lesson for me is that no hurricane is minor. The National Hurricane Center rates storms by sustained winds and Category Three moves up to the category of Major Hurricane but even 80 miles an hour, sustained is a lot of wind, even if it isn't sustained at 115 mph.

Hurricanes lose strength over land by Hermine is expected to bring rain and wind to the east coast and ratchet back more strength in time to give the Outer Banks a good blow and perhaps bring damage to New Jersey and New York. That's the true power of a hurricane, even a modest category one that drops back to being just a tropical storm over land. Hermine dropped an estimated five inches of water in a  few hours on the Gulf Coast. Check out this picture below and ask yourself how you'd feel watching waves roll past your home in the middle of the night with shrieking winds:

And the clean up after a storm is a pain in the ass. Power will probably be out and so will insects in force. It will be hot and sticky and drinking water will be as warm as the proverbial bucket of warm piss. Manual labor will be the order of the day and you will be lacking sleep and composure. 

And all this if the storm doesn't increase in intensity in the last hours before landfall and perhaps the tide is higher than anticipated so flooding will be worse and on and on. I don't envy them Up North as they deal with all this. So the question is: what do we do in the Keys when hurricanes threaten? We sit back and watch the rest of the country get trashed. So far...But in the event don't underestimate the strength of the storm.