Re: OT: Hurricane Bertha

jonathan wrote:

My first hurricane had an eye that was a solid 'ring' if
there ever was one. Try sitting helplessly at home for
half the night watching the radar loop of this thing
coming straight at ya.
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Storm_pages/andrew1992/radar.html

The suspense is just incredible. As the thing steadily approaches
the sense of forboding grows by the minute, your imagination
starts to fly off the handle. About three hours before it
arrives all the tv and radio stations start dropping off
one by one until there's nothing but the wind to listen to.
And for those last couple of hours there's no way to know
if it turning towards you, or getting stronger or what.
You assume the worst and just have to ...sit there
and wait for it.

There is much to be said for preparation and knowledge ("Hurricane
Strike" at https://www.meted.ucar.edu/loginForm.php?urlPath=hurrican
is an excellent example of this), and it's good to have the online
radar and satellite and buoy information and all the rest available
today, but I watched Katrina form and cross the Gulf, knowing it was
going to hit New Orleans because the NHC had predicted that pretty
soon after it had cleared the Florida coast. That actually made that
storm traumatic for me, I think (though it was only a full strength
tropical storm/barely Category 1 hurricane by the time it got far
enough inland to affect us): to this day, I can't bear to see any
radar or satellite images of that storm. A similar thing with Felix
crossing the Miskito Coast of Nicaragua last year, knowing the tens of
thousands of Indians who were in its path on the cays and low coastal
areas (a number that has never been acknowledged, AFAIK).


" I Think that the root of the Wind is Water,
It would not sound so deep
Were it a firmamental product,
Airs no Oceans keep-
Mediterranean intonations,
To a Current's ear
There is a maritime conviction
In the atmosphere."
Emily Dickinson

Mars will never really be "home" to us, if and when we make it there,
not even if we become the Martians, as Bradbury put it; we carry too
much of the Ocean in us for that to happen.

Barb

PS: Right after my post last night, Bertha did some unusual things
that did not include becoming annular. Very interesting but weird
storm. Right now it may be committing suicide by sitting in pretty
much the same place and churning up cold water from the depths of the
relatively shallow water there, though the NHC does expect it to move
on and remain a hurricane/tropical storm for a few days more.
.