Earl

I took several shots yesterday and some video which you may see later but these shots taken by our friends were the only pictures that illustrated the power of a hurricane. Or maybe the fun we were having waiting for the hurricane to hit. As the wind was picking up on Monday morning we were buttoning up our condo. Then we played a little storm chaser and drove around the island to see what the wind was doing. The northside at that point was really getting it good and our southern exposure was in the lee of the wind so we weren't subjected to the full force winds. After our drive we visited our friends in the neighborhood and talked Hurricane for awhile. The full force was supposed to hit about 2 pm and 2 rolled around and we were outside like this goofing around. "Awh, this hurricane stuff wasn't what we were expecting" "sorta anticlimactic" etc. Well we forgot that wind directions change in a Hurricane. The eye of the hurricane is the lowest air pressure of the storm system and so air from all directions of the compass is flowing towards the center of the storm. As the storm advances northward the first winds we experience are come from the north then as it draws nearer to our latitude the winds have slowly shifted counterclockwise to come from the west and as the hurricane passes us and heads north the last of the winds are coming from the south. And that's when it hit us! Wow! What we intended to be a 2 hour visit turned to six! Our gracious hosts fed and entertained us as we all marveled at the bending trees, amazing waves, salt spray and worried about the roof coming off. We finally decided we should brave the wind and head home. Our short drive was uneventful though there were many branches on the ground and salt spray in the air. We had power (and AC) the entire day thanks to generators so we weren't too put out by it all. In the end we heard the eye of the storm was 60 miles from us - over Anegada in the BVI. That means we should have been experiencing winds between 110-130 mph, though we are not sure that is actually what we got. They were high winds for sure but the did not seem that high.