TS Chris Update

Well, yesterday was interesting. Blue skies, calm waters, hot sun. The kids and I spent the late morning and early afternoon at Oualie swimming around. We actually got a little bit of a sunburn. Yesterday was hot, hot, hot. I even spent a good portion of the time in the water. Oualie is usually very calm, but yesterday the water was a bit churned up.

Around 2pm, we had to pick up Brian at school and I noticed that the clouds were moving backwards. In fact, all day the planes had been landing and taking off in the opposite direction of normal. So, all the tradewinds had shifted and were flowing from west to east into the storm. (The tradewinds usually flow east to west.) Around 4pm, Brian and I went for an easy run (4 miles - 39 minutes) and the winds had shifted again, this time flowing north to south. It was weird.

After our run, Gary and Michelle Brown brought our car back. Michelle had borrowed the car IN APRIL, and some local guy hit her. This car has been at the mechanic, Men at Work (no kidding), since that time! We finally have it back, which is a good thing. Actually, it looks pretty good, considering. Anyway, I followed Brian into town to get some gas, just in case he ran out. Passing Oualie, all of the boats had been taken off the dock and anchored in the bay, just in case. Around 8pm we got a nice, easy rain shower. But the most interesting things were the clouds over the ocean that were feeding into the storm. I took a few pictures, but I don't think the resolution really shows how cool they looked.

Around 10pm there was a bit of lightening and thunder, but we passed the night without incident. Ends up, TS Chris tracked a few degrees of latitude north of the original path. So, right now the tradewinds are flowing northeast as the back end of the storm strengthens and sucks up all that good Caribbean Sea moisture. We are expecting clouds and showers today, but the TS warning has been lifted. So, that's the good news. The bad news is that the storm is expected to strengthen into a hurricane within the next few days. Currently, projections have it entering the passage just south of the Florida Keys and into the Gulf. So, this one will more than likely hit the USA sometime next week.