Sunday, August 31, 2008

Very strange weather we're having

Okay, so it's nothing like the drenching Haiti got or the pounding Cuba got and New Orleans is about to get from Gustav. When he went by here a good ways south of us, he wasn't much more than a fairly mild tropical depression. Amazing how quickly these storms can become so powerful.

That said it's been mighty strange the past week. Two days in a row we had the most powerful thunderstorms I've ever seen (and I've been in or near four tornadoes). Not so much high wind and rain - although we had that too - but HUGE lightning bolt followed immediately by HUGE thunderclaps. Amber doesn't like storms and he was beside himself. Even Jazz who usually doesn't mind storms was pretty freaked.

Then there's the wind. First, for the past week there hasn't been much, which is rare in itself.
When the wind has blown, it's come from the wrong direction. Ninety-nine percent of the time the tradewinds blow from a very narrow angle from NNE to ESE. When the winds turn around and blow from the west, everybody freaks out. It just feels WRONG. People get cranky. Animals behave strangely. Everything is out of sync. What little wind we've had for the past week has been out of the west or southwest.

And hot...it's been hotter the last three days than we've ever known it. So most things are kinda running in a lower gear, just keepin' calm and trying to stay cool.

Tropical Storm Hannah is out there somewhere north of us. The computer models show it hitting the other (northeast) coast of Cuba. And there are two more tropical "distrubances" out over the Atlantic east of us. The first one looks like it's going to curve away north into nothingness. We'll keep an eye on the one just off the coast of Africa. Hopefully it won't amount to anything either.

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