Monday, August 13, 2007

Update on Hurricane Flossie and 8/13 earthquake...


So the earthquake did end up being the first mention on the 10 o'clock news, short story though as there wasn't much information whether there was any damage. It was felt on the Kona side, but not strongly.

Flossie's in the news bigtime. Assuming this works,here's a cool site from the University, it shows the animated hurricane track, it takes a while to load so be patient. Just in the last few hours the eye has broken up and the storm is spreading out (essentially weakening on the fringes). Tonight's news said they expect a downgrade to a category two in the morning.

Coming into a potential hurricane is interesting. Traffic was nuts today around 4-5pm, everyone seemed to be on the road. Costco was jammed with people buying water and canned goods, the corner with Walmart and Safeway was very busy, by the time I made it home around 6pm I went to Choicemart in Captain Cook and you'd think it was the day before Thanksgiving or Easter (surprisingly that is pretty much the busiest grocery day of the year the years I worked in grocery way back when) by all the crowds. Nearly every cart had water.

Assuming we are relatively protected in Kona, water probably won't be our biggest single issue. Odds are if there are winds elsewhere on the island, there'll be power outages as a downed line on the other side can cause problems here. The news said to expect winds in the 40mph range and up to 10 inches of rain in the affected areas on the southeast side... glad I don't live in Wood Valley or Pahala.

The pictures on this and the last post are of a Dragon Wrasse (Novaculichthys taeniourus). This was a good sized juvenile. The juveniles have the elongated front dorsal spines, a lot of divers who don't know the hawaiian fish will come up and say they saw a lionfish 'til we get a description and show them the picture in the book we carry on board.

Goodnight... I'll try to update tomorrow morning unless I'm running around like mad trying to batten down the hatches.

Aloha,

Steve

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