A couple weeks ago we were watching Hurricane Hector as it developed into a cat 5 storm. Though it looked absolutely massive in the satellite image, it did not affect anything here. It just went south.
Tonight, I am waiting on Hurricane Lane. It was a cat 4 storm yesterday, but is now a cat 3. It is south, but not enough south. We initiated our emergency plan at the Hawaiian Mission Houses. In the 1821 House we moved artifacts into the center of rooms and covered them with plastic.
I thought the rain would start at 8pm, but so far it has been a beautiful day. I decided to stay overnight at the museum, but it has been pretty anticlimactic.
I was looking through this blog this evening. I remember being in many storms in the Turks and Caicos, but I hardly wrote about any of them. I went back through the Atlantic Hurricane Seasons to see what I would have experienced.
Tropical Storm Ingrid was in September 2007, mentioned in my second blog post. Hurricane Noel, came through the TCI on October 29, I had just left for Columbus to get Deneen and the boys. On December 11, we ate dinner outside during Tropical Storm Olga, the last storm of the 2007 season. I remember it as one of the best dinner experiences I have ever had. Deneen remembers it as the day we left our kids at home alone during the hurricane. 2008 was one of the biggest hurricane seasons on record. On August 15th, I was in the house on GT during Tropical Storm Fay. I wrote a blog being thankful for the water. Dave Horn came to visit Grand Turk on August 16th. He stayed for a week. On August 28, I left Grand Turk to get Deneen and the boys who were off island for the summer. In the next ten days, Grand Turks was hit by Hurricane Gustav, Hurricane Hannah, and then Hurricane Ike tore the island apart on September 7th. So, I went through three storms with very little comment. And the other three storms changed the rest of our lives.
Update: Lane stayed at sea, moving at about 2mph, and was continually downgraded all day. Friday evening it was just a tropical storm and that did not even make landfall in Honolulu. Everyone is glad we prepared for an emergency that never came.
