So this is supposed to hit us directly tomorrow. Mostly I’m worried about the power going out, leaving me without internet. What does that say about my internet addiction? Nothing good. Oh, and I worry about my tomato plant, which can’t be brought indoors. It appeared in my flower garden a few weeks ago all by itself, though, so maybe it’s all tough and resourceful. Wish the little green tomatoes luck!
Anyway, all the outdoor stuff is put away and our house is made of concrete (and so are all the other houses around here, so no flying 2x4s to pierce the windows). My husband is on a plane to Korea, where the C-130s he works on are being taken to be out of harms way.
This is my first big typhoon. Last year it was all hype and no action, but it looks like this one is going to be big. What’s weird is when you go outside all the Cicadas are absolutely screaming…tons of bug racket. I’ve never heard anything like it. I’m kind of excited. Big storm!
Morgenstern, unfortunately, the last thing we need is warm blankets. If the a/c goes out I’m more likely to sweat to death than freeze :). We’re all stocked up on food and water (and beer) though.
Thanks for the links, Squink. That second image is awesome. I wasn’t sold on the fact that Man-Yi was going to even hit the island until yesterday. Last year every other week they were telling us some storm was about the devastate everything (everyone! go grocery shopping right now!), and all we ever got was mild wind and a few splashes of rain. It looks like Okinawa is right in the path of this one, though.
Nice job on the links and update, Squink. We’ll be thinking about you, Renee, wish you a quick and not too exciting experience getting through this and will eagerly anticipate your return stories, especially about the aerodynamicity of a green tomato.
Power’s back on! We survived! It really was crazy last night, but no major damage. I got a bit spooked and slept in the guest bedroom–the master bedroom has a big sliding glass door that faces the ocean and I was afraid something might come through, waking me up rudely.
And (!) my baby tomatoes are still there (a minor miracle–the rest of the plant and most of the garden looks like hell). The forecast calls for anther round of heavy wind and rain today, but the worst of it is past.
Is it a good idea to board up your windows? I live in an area that gets less than 5 inches of rainfall a year, so I’m a storm newbie. I’d think that vegetation and sand and hail getting tossed around might be a danger to the windows, though.
I really don’t know. Some people here have storm shutters. Oddly, some people put masking tape on their windows in large X shapes right before storms (to contain potential glass shards?) I just close the curtains and hope for the best. Tape can be a bitch to get off of glass.
To give you an idea, this is the view from our lawn. So we’re pretty close to the water. But this house is about 6 years old now and has never had any broken windows or major damage even w/o storm shutters or boarding up windows. You can see the power lines in that picture, though. They don’t bury power lines here-- I was sort of worried about them coming loose and whipping around. But they didn’t (power poles here are made of concrete, btw–no wooden poles).
Just so you kind of have an idea what we’re talking about here, this is our house from the road (it’s an up/down duplex and we’re on the bottom floor). So it’s concrete, but also a lot of glass (eight exterior doors total in about 1000 sf.). All the glass you see on the bottom are sliding doors, and the on the right is our bedroom. These doors seal pretty tightly, and it’s obvious from the picture it would have to be be apocalyptic flooding before flood waters reached us, but even so with the wind we had about an inch of water on the floor in one area in the house this morning. I mopped it up and no more problems.
Looking around today, many plants look damaged but most of them are still alive and in a couple of weeks I think everything will be back to normal. Tropical climate–things recover quickly.
They’re building a house across the street from us and they left a garden hose on the roof yesterday. It’s still there today. I think maybe hoses and the like are too aerodynamic to be picked up by wind? We left our hose out, too, and no problems.
We have a large pine tree about 15’ from our house and none of the major branches broke off, which surprised me. It was whipping around like crazy last night and really making me a little nervous. It’s amazing how much live wood can bend before it breaks.
Any more typhoon related questions, let me know. The power has remained on, but I’m going to bed soon. We had a typhoon party tonight and I’m slightly drunk, so please excuse any poor grammar or spelling.