Irene - Tropical Storm or Hurricane?

Monday, August 22^nd

Jesus.  Excuse my language, but holy shit.  Sunday night/Monday morning, Tropical Storm Irene blew through Puerto Rico.  Yes, Tropical Storm.  Not a hurricane.  I can’t even imagine and probably won’t have to since some level of hurricane is inevitable during my stay.  Of course, I would have been oblivious to the whole thing if not for a text from Dallas on Sunday afternoon:

2:00 – Text from Sammy in Dallas asking me if Charlie and I are hunkered down.  I have absolutely no idea what he is talking about (I can’t find local news in English, and even if I could I probably still wouldn’t know what was going on.  Must add regular viewing of the Weather Channel to the to-do list.)

3:00 – Rain starts hammering and I wish I would have brought the furniture in off the patio.  It’s soaked.  I can’t see the beach through the rain.

4:00 – Rain stops and pretty much dries up.  Still very windy.  Head to the corner store for provisions (aka - splurged on the $10.99 six pack of Michelob Ultra for my Hurricane Party for one.)

5:30 – Rain picks up again. This time I move the nearly dry patio furniture inside.  Power and cable go out.  Generator kicks on, have power but no TV or internet.  It’s REALLY windy.  Palm trees are blowing every which way and I’m thinking this is kind of cool.

7:30 – Cable comes back on, so I get to watch most of the Cowboys game.  Wind is really blowing now and the rain is hammering.  Not quite so cool in the dark.

10:30 – Power and cable go out again.  The generator kicks on, but I miss the last five minutes of the game.  I try to go to bed, but my bedroom is on the eastern side of the building and the whole eastern wall is a huge sliding glass patio door.  It’s chattering and slamming and the hurricane shutter that I can’t get closed is banging around.  Head back out to sleep on the couch.  Fall asleep around 11:30.

1:00 – Wake up from the clattering and banging of the western facing sliding glass door.  I can see the glass flexing in the wind and the noise is making it impossible to sleep.  I start to worry about the glass blowing right out and then realize I don’t have renter’s insurance yet.   Sit on the couch for about an hour and a half, curled up in a ball with my heart pounding, waiting for the worst.  I live on the sixth floor of an 18 story building made of concrete and I can feel it swaying side to side.  Charlie is sleeping like it’s his job. (Come to find out that this was actually the timing of the WORST part of the storm.)

2:30 – Finally head to guest bedroom in the middle of the apartment to try to get some sleep.  Figure whatever is going to happen is going to happen.  The wind is no longer cool.  It’s downright sinister. 

4:00 – I may have dozed for a few minutes on and off but can't get any good sleep due to the noise.  And I have to get up every 20 minutes to make sure the windows are intact.  At one point I walk into the living room and step in a huge puddle of water.  As I appreciate the fact that I am renting, I grab and towel and soak it up, figuring this is why the floors are marble tiles and not carpet.

Sometime around 4:30, I finally fell asleep.  The chattering of the hurricane shutters finally died to a point where I wasn’t consumed with the thought that any minute the glass doors would burst.  The office was closed today – no power, internet, or air conditioning will do that.  So I spent all day at home without TV or internet.  I have some serious cabin fever.  Charlie and I got out for a walk around 2pm. The streets are absolutely littered with palm tree debris.  Entire light posts are bent in half and billboards are down.  The streets and sidewalks are an obstable course of downed limbs and branches.  Let the clean up efforts begin!

Wednesday, August 24^th

I was so excited to see some blue sky peeking out this morning! It's been raining for over 48 hours.  And not a nice Seattle drizzle, but tropical, heavy rain.  I’ve just finally done some research, and from what I can tell, Irene was just below hurricane status when it passed over San Juan.  At 11pm on Sunday night, reports said we had sustained winds at 70 MPH.  I've learned that 74 MPH makes it a hurricane.  That report was two or three hours before the worst of it, so it had to be right on the cusp of official hurricane status.  I can’t explain the sense of relief that gives me.  It was pretty scary, so at least I don't have to live with the mystery of wondering what a real hurricane would be like.  Now I have a measuring stick by which to compare all future potential storms.  Living in Houston, you could always just get in the car and drive inland if you wanted to get away from a threatening storm.  You don't have that option in Puerto Rico; the entire island is about 30 miles wide.  God help me if a Category 2 or worse heads my way.  

My boss here is a California native.  We’ve chatted a bit about living in earthquake territory, and how I was leaving tornado country, and I thought I’d prefer hurricanes.  They have a decided advantage over earthquakes and tornados in that you can see them coming.  Well, after this experience, I might prefer 20 minutes huddled in the bathtub to eight hours of pounding winds.  Tornados and earthquakes wreak their havoc in a relatively short period of time.  Irene went on for hours.

We went back to work yesterday, and it was nice to get out of the house.  My building is still on generator power, and the cable and internet finally came on as I was getting into bed last night.  After two full days being alone with my thoughts and no TV to distract me, I welcomed heading to the office.  Once there, I learned several co-workers were still without power and water.  So I decided not to bitch too much about not having the internet.  I did make it the first 25 years of my life without it, after all.  Though it was rough trying to do my Fantasy Football draft from my cell phone and I fear my team will suffer the entire season because of it!