Big Day

[Kip]

The actual track is the key. If it follows the projections, awesome. If it strays even 20-25 miles south of that track all hell breaks loose here and all bets are off.

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[jledou]

Praying for a "northern kick" for you and the people of the DR Kip. Stay safe brother.

[Kip]

The 11pm report is better for us, but not so much for the Bahamas. It's taken a slight northern shift.

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[Kip]

We're looking mostly in the clear for hurricane winds, but will have TS winds from about 8am through late tomorrow night / early Friday morning.

St. Maarten videos and French government reports are catastrophic. In fact, the French government says preliminarily that it's possible every structure in the island is gone or beyond repair. They took an absolutely unimaginable pounding.

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[Kip]

A couple updates. The rain bands have been coming through since a little before 4am. Windy, but not bad. The first real stiff wind just came in and knocked the power out. Not even gale force. First. Real. Wind. The infrastructure here sucks. It looks like the storm moved even a bit more north, and it is wildly unbalanced in terms of intensity, meaning our side (weak side) is relatively calm. It looks like a bullet dodged for the DR.

Good news is, Puerto Rico appears to have also largely dodged the bullet. I was watching American news earlier and they're really dramatizing it. The 900k people they're reporting without power mostly are only without power because the government cut it off....not the storm. It's a commonly employed safety maneuver during the brunt of a storm. Our friends with family in San Juan are reporting that the storm was very kind to PR, and damage is a shadow of expected.

Anguilla, St. Maarten, and some of the smaller islands that took a direct hit are where the real tragedy lies so far. Florida and points North are yet to be seen, but the forecast track continues to edge eastward - which is very favorable. It moves the US coast to the weak side, and increases the possibility that it may even remain offshore. Well see by weekend, I suppose.

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[Kip]

The rain is already piling up. We're expecting 10 inches or more (#TWSS), which is problematic for a city that can be flooded with 3 well placed mattresses. There's no tobacco in the fields, but I imagine most other crops will be severely hindered (especially sugarcane, which is king).

The wind makes the news, but the rain does the damage.

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[Kip]

I forgot to mention (complain) that the US State Department coordinated flights to evacuate their folks yesterday. They were kind enough to offer tickets first come first served for US citizens....at $900 a seat. Roughly double the norm.

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[Kip]

Yeah, I'm bored and wishing I had power, even though I'm pretty used to outages. Here I am. I'm the blue dot, waving at you guys....



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[kurtdesign1]

Truly unbelievable for you guys. I was nervous. NERVOUS. I'm glad that the worst there was to suffer seems to have passed you by. The report you shared about St. Maarten was sobering. I've never heard one similar.

[Kip]

Reports are coming in from the parts if the country that the storm has already visited, and they are worse than I'd expected earlier. The eastern Sábana peninsula got a good lashing, and there is already a good bit of flooding all over the country. The main thrust of wind and heaviest rain is just coming into Santiago, and my friends are already sending pics of flooded houses around their neighborhoods. We've just begun to get gusts that rumble. Nothing terribly sustained as of yet. The next few hours should bring typical TS stuff. It's really the rain that's going to be the problem for the Cibao Valley.

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