“Flo”ing blog….

Monday 7am – Slept pretty good, we were woken up a few times from flashes of lightning or the sound of thunder, but the buildings are so steady, no howling or whistling of wind, we are sheltered quite well.  The winds are certainly getting strong, but we still have power, not full power can’t run much and things flicker now and then, but better than we expected.  There is practically no rain, and the ground looks pretty dry, we aren’t getting the massive dumping they were calling for.  The radio is reporting that as many as 25,000 people might be without power.  There is a tree (it was dying anyway) in our driveway that has blown over, but no other damage or debris around the complex.

830 am – Shawn wins the first round of the hurricane (pronounced her-a-kin) scrabble tournament thanks to scoring 69 pts with zits J

9am – Surprisingly small amount of rain, the wind gusts are getting stronger and stronger as the centre of the storm gets closer.   We still got power but its weak, we can run a lamp and the fridge seems to be running and water pump, hey that’s all we need.  We are pretty lucky to be away from the coast.

Storm is about an hour away or so, the real meat of it should be here soon.  Florence is a category 1 (can we say only….?), winds are supposedly 70 knots, but we aren’t getting that here at the apartment, (based on pure guesses).  It’s probably a lot worse along the coast and towards the edges of the island.  Still pretty muggy and warm outside. 

10am – Glad the landscapers were here last Thursday and trimmed the greenery in the back yard, I am sure that has helped with the limited debris that has amassed in the back yard.

Good news is that the storm is weaker than many were expecting.  The thunder, lightning, heavy rain is to the west of the eye and the island is on the east, so we are getting the lighter winds.  They now think we will only get a couple inches of rain which is a major upgrade on the forecast, we haven’t seen much for rain so far.  The wind gusts are quite strong but the rain is surprisingly light.

The eye is as close as it gets, apparently once the eye passes the winds will drop off.  The speed of the storm should also speed up, meaning it should improve quicker.  So we wait and shall see… 

Noon – The strongest winds came around 11 or so, with some real powerful gusts, the power company thinks there could be 25,000 people without power.  (We still have ours).  There are reports of a few trees down and a few power lines.  A few transformers got struck by lightning overnight.  Someone lost their roof off their garage but all in all the eye of the storm has passed and the worst of the storm is over.

We are already noticing the winds are getting lighter especially the gusts.  Never did get much for rain, at least where we are.

3pm –After going the whole hurricane and not losing power, it finally gives out about 1:30.  For about 90 minutes or so we get some of the more powerful gusts so far.  Must be the winds switching directions and the position of the walls around the apartment complex.  It’s either that or blog power.  So far whenever I draft or post an entry about whatever it is doing it has changed. Yesterday I wrote that the rain was starting, and then it would stop; we got to bed and I write no rain, starts to pour. 

I win the 2^nd match of scrabble (handily – <gloat>), Sue can’t pull a good tile out to save her life!  But then in my cockiness lose the 3^rd in the rematch. J

Its hot, we have the window open a bit to try and get the temp down, but this has also raised the humidity to about 90% in here.  People upstairs are having a hurricane aftermath celebration I think, bbq for lunch and they are out on the porch chatting.  The winds are down quite a bit, but still gusting often with lots of guts.

Most of the radio personalities have been on the air all night and they sound like they are losing their grip, and are becoming loopy due to a lack of sleep.  But old Willie Nelson (Buenos Dias….something…, “You’re the reason for Oklahoma” and “do you remember the time” by Michael Jackson are pretty entertaining although not sure in the way the artists originally intended.  My best Michael Jackson dance keeps Sue entertained, although not sure in the way I intended.

Apparently there are sight seers already out walking down the street with their kids.  With reports of flying debris, makes you wonder what they are thinking.  The radio thinks (ok well the people on the radio think) that they should get $1,000 ticket for bringing their kids out so close to a storm.  Of course this would mean that even more people would need to be out to write the tickets…

Aftermath – lack of power was no biggie, we bbq’d for supper.  Scrabble by candlelight is different.  Overall there is only minor damage and most of the island should be back up and running tomorrow.  Some parts of the south shore got some damage from the storm surge but most things are in good shape.  We got power back about 9:30 or so (wohoo TV is back!).

Overall the storm was weaker than we thought, but we benefited greatly from being inland and well sheltered.  A few times we went out there was a big difference going up the stairs.  Mostly just leaves and a couple of branches around.  I think the south shore was a different story.  I found some pictures that other people took and posted them on the site.  We also took some pics and video, I will sort through them, if there is anything good I will post it in the morning.Thanks to the Limey ( www.limeyinbermuda.com) for assembling some great pictures of the storm (a couple of which I shameless included in our set), you can seem more of his great photos here http://www.flickr.com/photos/pw9272/sets/72157594278333935/

The weather channel has this video, from the correspondent here, we didn’t see any weather like this.

http://www.weather.com/multimedia/videoplayer.html?clip=4106&collection=topstory&from=wxcenter_video

Shitty part is they are tracking Tropical Storm Gordon, which sounds like something for next weekend, but at this point looks like it will miss us well off to the east….we will keep our fingers crossed.

{Sorry for the long post…}

 Cheers from Bermuda….

 Shawn & Sue