Tropical Storm Maria
Position: 12.5N 53.7W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: West [280°] near 16 mph [26 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 50 mph [ 85 kph].
Wind Gusts: 70 mph [115 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 45 miles [ 75 km].
Minimum central pressure: 1002 mb.
Currently about 545 miles [ 880 km] East-Southeast of the Lesser Antilles.
A Hurricane Watch is in effect for Antigua, Barbuda, St. Kitts, Nevis, and Montserrat; Guadeloupe; Saba & St. Eustatius; St. Maarten; and Anguilla.
A Tropical Storm Watch is in effect for St. Lucia; Martinique; Guadeloupe; Dominica; Barbados; and St. Vincent & the Grenadines.
Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.
[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]
34 comments
Sigh…
Is there no end to this stuff? They just keep coming and coming.
I get to sleep until 4AM, then update and nap until 7AM for Maria, and then everyone at 10AM.Forget the Atlantic beaches for a while. Jose is going to set up rip currents and rough surf even if it does make land fall.
Apparently Maria went from cat 1 to 5 in no time! Dominica took a big hit! P.R. & the Virgin Islands are bracing for the worst.
A lady friend of a friend Tweeted last night:
“It just turned cat 5
It will be a direct hit
It will put us uncomunicated for weeks possibly months
So ill try to updated as much as possible
The signal will probably cut off immediately once it hitd”
My friend hasn’t heard anything since.
Meteorologist Eric Holthaus tweeted:
“Just 24 hours ago, #Maria was a Category 1. Now, by all accounts, Dominica lays largely in ruins from a Category 5.
An unfathomable tragedy.”
“There was no computer model showing this would happen, although there were hints. Meteorological conditions were ideal for strengthening.”
“What transpired on Monday was a true nightmare, a worst-case scenario.”
“f you are in P.R. or the Virgin Islands: Do whatever you must do on Tuesday to prepare for Maria. Help each other.
This is the big one.”
Dominica had been the target almost from the beginning and the National Hurricane Center used their “Potential Tropical Cyclone” tag to alert people before Maria was even an official tropical depression that this was an a chunk of evil moving across the South Atlantic. It looked like a small compact little hurricane until yesterday afternoon. It slowly climbed to category 2 and then it must have hit an eddy of hot water, because it shot from 2 to 5 in a few hours. We still can’t forecast storm intensity very well, but everything was available to say that this was going to be a major hurricane. It hit Dominica right after making category 5 and rolled right over it. Maria is more like a very large tornado than a regular hurricane.
I have friends in Puerto Rico, they are Mennonite missionaries that have been doing work there for the past year. 3 days ago they sent all their family and friends an update on what had been happening to them in Florida, Puerto Rico. The power had just been turned back on from Harvey the day they wrote the newsletter! Little did they know! At that time, they didn’t know what to expect from Maria, but they were making preparations. Haven’t heard from them since, but I’m sure they are up to their eyeballs preparing or leaving.
They have six children and one on the way. Hope they got the heck out of Dodge. And yeah, I blinked and it went from category 3 to 5. I don’t know what happened to category 4!
Mennonites are good people in the disaster recovery field. They do a lot of rebuilding in the small towns that get forgotten by their governments. Habitat, the Friends, and the Mennonites all show up ready to work.
Based on my memory only, I think the 909mb pressure for Maria at 7PM CDT is lower than Irma’s lowest reading, which is not good news for anyone in the storm’s path. Hopefully it will need an eyewall replacement and weaken some before hitting St Crois or Puerto Rico.
Yes, the Mennonites around here are well liked. Unlike a lot of more fundamental style religions, they laugh a lot and are more joyful in general than some might expect. They make great neighbors which is how I met this family. They bought about 40 acres of land from me. In no time, the father and boys had built a pond, put in a little barn, built a chicken house, and cleared land for the garden! And if you needed anything, they would offer to help.
I worked with several Amish groups in the past, and the ones I met were very nice people but they were a bit more somber than my Mennonite friends. Unlike the Mennonites, they wanted to buy really large tracts (200 acres or more) and several families go in together on them. Or at least the ones I worked with.
The Amish are more dedicated to separation than the Mennonites, although they both come from the same Anabaptist roots. The Mennonites believe in enjoying life without a lot of extras, while the Amish seem to be afraid of the ‘extras’.
The Amish do good work, but I would like to see them enjoy their good work a bit more.
The Mennonites are a lot like my Swiss farmer great aunts & uncles who worked hard all week and enjoyed Saturday night dances.
The Mennonites are a lot like my Swiss farmer great aunts & uncles who worked hard all week and enjoyed Saturday night dances.
Exactly! When I worked with the Amish, I can’t recall the women ever smiling at all. Still, they were extremely courteous and pleasant to work with, but a completely different temperament, that’s for sure.
No word out of Puerto Rico yet. I’m sure they’ll do a “broadcast” email when they get a chance, just to let everyone know if they are all okay.
The only contact is with battery powered satellite phones. Early reports are of landslides from the heavy rains and the total destruction of the power system. They are predicting months without power.
Months! Yikes. And the country is in a financial crisis with not much set aside for rebuilding infrastructure.
If you look at the materials needed to rebuild everything that Irma & Maria have destroyed from Florida through the Caribbean, it isn’t just a matter of having the cash to pay for it, is is the shortage of materials to buy and the availability of transportation. The push for cost-cutting has reduced the ability of businesses and countries to absorb shocks.
We don’t have a supply of utility poles available to replace all of those that were destroyed. We don’t have the replacement wire and transformers sitting in warehouses. Everything is going to see a major price increase because of shortages. It is going to be a long process, and people need to embrace the 19th century, because they will be living in it for a while.
Sorry. Lost NBN again. Getting used to it. *shrug*
It’s a travesty really! $Trillions for MIC & Golf, SFA for the needs of citizens. USA has totally f*cked up priorities! Has 4 decades. Same here BTW. *shrug*
All that’s happening is a primary school playground argument between the supposedly adult leaders of two nuclear powers. So far North Korea is ahead on vocabulary points and folksy metaphors.
Badtux is suffering from network attacks by a landscaper clearing weeds and his ISP’s techs.
Welcome back. I’m getting buried by tropical cyclones, which have avoided me so far.
A US Twitter friend sent me this YT link! PMSL
Bill Mayher has 45’s number spot on! LOL
New Rule: The City Mouse and the Country Mouse
Yes, but the ‘country mice’ don’t like voting for their own – Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton – and would rather vote for con men – Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump. They are “some of the people’ who can be ‘fooled all of the time’. The reason few con men get prosecuted is that the ‘marks, victims of the con, don’t want to admit they were fooled.
One word… No! Make that two Words:
Mormonism
Scientology
There is an easily conned moron born every minute in the USA!
I rest my case!
There are times I almost wish I wasn’t so ethical or honorable. Or moral, for that matter. I definitely wouldn’t have financial problems. *shrug* Though, the downside would be having to kiss the arse of people I’d much rather hang!
The annoying thing is the number of people in the media who still think that Trump is going to ‘pivot’ and become more reasonable. He hasn’t changed, and at his/my age isn’t about to even consider changing.
Now you have the professional staff people at the White House looking for a way out. They took a job with Trump thinking it would help their employment prospects and are realizing being a member of this White House will probably get them banned from decent jobs forever.
So many people who refused to admit they fucked up and supported the SOB.
Hey guys, I’m a country mouse! Be nice…you’ll hurt my feelings. 🙁
You’re a ‘country mouse’ who knew a con man when you saw him and recognized a truly good man, Jimmy Carter, when he ran. We’re talking about people who should know better being convinced to vote against their own best interests. Show me a farmer who doesn’t believe in climate change and I’ll show you a bankruptcy. I live in a village of less than 400, surrounded by a town of about 25,000 – not exactly an urban center.
Thanks 🙂
You’re right, my brother voted for him, and he’s one of the nicest people you would ever want to meet. (He’s not a white supremacist, nutcase, hate mongerer…) He and his wife have taken in three of their grandchildren because their parents won’t do the job. One of the children is a special needs child. He used to vote Democratic, but he owns a small trucking business and felt that the Democrats had forgotten the small businesses in favor of the large corporations. Which may have a ring truth to it, but why in the world he thought Trump would have any conception of what he goes through as a small business escapes me. The man was born with a silver spoon!?!
I just think that some of the people that voted for Trump did it out of a type of desperation that the quality of their lives had deteriorated so much. When you feed people like this a pack of lies, they want to believe it because they don’t have anything else.
And then of course, you do have stupid people who love it when he rips someone. It’s like watching Jerry Springer for them. A reality show.
I’m a country mouse too Juanita. And 45 conned all the city mice for decades before starting on the country mice, after many city morons finally wised up. 😉 😆
Apparently, Bannon’s been seen *advising* 45 & co, even though it’s forbidden under the law for 12 Month’s & doesn’t try to hide it.
Steve Bannon Says the Firing of James Comey Is the Biggest Mistake in Modern Political History
Now 45 is calling Mom’s bitches! Another big mistake!
Teresa Kaepernick On Trump Calling Injustice Protesters Sons Of Bitches: “It’s What Most Of Us Have Come To Expect From Him”
Your brother is correct, but both parties give preference to corporations and no one helps out the small business. I live in a totally Republican controlled area and watched in horror as WalMart, Lowe’s, and Home Depot got all kinds of traffic and road improvements as well as tax breaks so they could drive local businesses out. If the big guys don’t pay taxes, the little guys are having to carry the load until it breaks them.
While we have had a large Asian population since the end of the Vietnam war, we had almost no Hispanics until those three big box stores rolled into town with their own construction crews. There was a noticeable lack of English among those crews.
I understand your brother’s attitude, but he picked the wrong guy for help with small business concerns. Trump is famous for refusing to pay contractors all they are owed, but the media never bothered to put out the truth about Trump’s ‘business success’, which doesn’t actually exist.
The problem is, Hillary Clinton was no better for small businesses.
The problem is, Hillary Clinton was no better for small businesses.
This is true. I’ll never forget the day a reporter was asking her about her history dealing with small business, and her remarks were “Well, you can’t bail out every under-capitalized business”! What! First of all, no one was asking her to bail anyone out, and second, every new startup business is always under-capitalized because the banks won’t lend until you can show proof of a thriving business. It’s the chicken or the egg deal, so people use whatever savings they have. Even Bill Gates was under-capitalized when he started out.
Kryten, so you’re a country mouse too! I’ve often wondered what portion of Australia you call home. It’s a ‘uge place! (Or is that “an” ‘uge place once you take the aitch out of it.) Bryan, you’re the teacher, help me out with the grammar. lol.
Yes I am Juanita! And proud to be so. I was raised on a Dairy farm (well, *mostly* dairy. We had sheep, mainly for wool, & chickens, for eggs… lot’s of fruit trees & vegetables. Horses too, mainly Clydesdale’s, though I was given a dapple-grey pony for my 10 birthday. I called him Tosca. 😀 When they were ripe, I’d grab a cucumber off the vine & a couple apples. One for me & one for Tosca. I’d munch the cuke on the way to school, sometimes a carrot. Funny, where our farm was in the 50’s, is now a major outer suburb of Melbourne. Part of our farm became the Town Hall & Railway Station. LOL Grandpa took me fishing & hunting from around 8. By the time I was 12, I was pretty good @ living off the land. I could find food & water, make a fire, build an oven with stones, shear a sheep, milk a cow, catch & shoe a horse… catch a snake. Handy with a knife, 101 uses for a good knife. LOL
I’ve pretty much lived all over Australia. And yes, it is ‘uge! A large chunk is desert. 2nd largest in the World after the Sahara. 🙂 We also have some of the biggest *ranches* in the World. the smaller ones are called Homesteads, the biggest are Stations. From memory, Cluny Station is still the largest here for over 100 years. 1,327 Million Acres! I pissed off a lot of Texas ranchers with that! Got into a non-verbal disagreement with one particular bunch. Some people have no sense of humor. Or very good survival instincts! LOL
If your curious, I have lot of pin’s about all kinds of Aussie places & flora/fauna & Some places I lived on Pinterest.
Pinterest: ♡Australia – Good, Weird, Bad
Funny… It was a long time ago, but I still miss the farm. Life was good & uncomplicated. I loved reading & learning sure, and Mom took me to the big city State Library in Melbourne most Saturday’s for the day. Mom loved books as much as I did. 🙂 We’d pack a lunch & snacks from the garden & trees. Mom would bake some Damper (Aussie bread) and some cookies, bottle of milk and lemonade Gran made. All fresh. Was a great day out for us.
Now, 1 lemon costs AU$1 and an orange is about AU$1.30! It’s insane. Used to just grow them. Cost nothing @ all. Oh well. Greed always win’s it seems.
I’ve never really likes cities to be honest. Can’t stay in one for too long. I like in a Large country town in Central Victoria now. Well, large by our standards, around 100,000 people. 4th largest town in Aus. I think. 😀
So, that’s me. Country Mouse. Always will be, until my last breath.
Whether or not it’s pronounced, if the ‘H’ is there the indefinite article is “A” [unless it’s Russian which doesn’t have articles of any kind]. Steve Bates is the authority on English.
Good Morning. Sorry for the typo’s above. Was late, or early… Just had a couple hours nap.
Anyway, just wanted to say that POTUS45 (or Donny Bankrupt) just tweeted about Puerto Rico. He blames them for everything.
I took a screen cap of the tweets here if you want to see the utter garbage (and my comment) on pinterest (the order of the tweets start @ the bottom & go up):
http://pinterest.com/pin/538461699189291153/
OT: If you or badtux or anyone knows someone using Deloitte, may want to show them this (and Gartner have serious questions to answer also):
Deloitte hacked, a brown trousers moment?
“Deloitte has managed the extraordinary feat of holding the world’s leading cyber security consulting firm position as assessed by Gartner while confessing to being hacked.”
As Deloitte’s fingerprints were all over several disastrous IT projects in Florida, people who have been paying attention have avoided them no matter what they were selling.
Thanks for the grammar lesson, Bryan. 😉 You wear a lot of hats, and most likely a bunch I don’t even know about. Lol. Who knows what you’ve been up to through the years. I always bug you when I want to know something about Russia, too. It fascinates me when someone is able to speak a foreign language fluently. I took 3 years of French, and I can read it well enough (albeit slowly) for magazine articles, etc. But I still can’t speak it. French with a southern accent is an ugly thing anyway.
Kryten, so you live in the green part of Australia! Your stories took me back some years to my growing up. Getting up early in the am for fresh eggs. I thought the chickens always looked so insulted when you snatched their eggs. Funny Pinterest page especially the guy on the throne! “If I don’t look at it, then it’s not really there.”
Hi Juanita. 😀 Usually green. When not frozen in the middle of Winter or brown & bone dry in Summer. Like most places really. 😉 😀
I meant to say when visiting my Australia Pinterest page, you’ll need to scroll past all the recent political crap to find the most interesting stuff about places, fauna & flora. We have some interesting creatures here (and some of them won’t try to kill you! Unless you do something really stupid of course! But that’s the same advice for anywhere really.) 😀
I’m guessing you did if you saw the poor sod on the throne with a nosy snake visiting. Happens more often than outsiders might believe! 😆
Anyway, glad you enjoyed it! You’ll have to tell me some about your neck of the Universe! I’m always curious about such things. 😀
Mais non, ma chere! Go 200 miles west of me and thousands speak French with a Southern accent … in Louisiana. Buy a few zydeco records and enjoy. The US military is the largest educational institution in the world and only use native speakers in their language courses. My parents believed that no matter what you wanted to do, someone has written a book explaining how to do it. All you had to do was find and buy the book, read it, and practice.
OK, Kryten, I’ll give you the sugar glider and the quokka, but pretty much everything else want a piece of you. 😉
Au contraire, Bryan. My father’s generation was the last generation in Louisiana that was raised in French speaking households and spoke French natively, and no, Cajun French is not spoken with a Southern accent, it’s spoken with a Cajun accent, Justin Wilson was *not* a Cajun, he was an Anglo from Baton Rouge. My father’s mother (my grandmother, who died when I was 1 year old) knew very little English, his father knew more but when they interacted it was mostly in French. My father would be 83 today if he were still alive. Native French speakers are getting very rare on the ground in Louisiana, most of them will be dead within the next ten years. My generation wasn’t raised in French speaking households, and neither were succeeding generations. The “English only” nativists had their way, in the end. (BTW, this makes searching through census records on my father’s side of the family *extremely* difficult, since my grandfather’s generation spoke only rudimentary English, and before that nobody spoke English, meaning that spellings in the Census records never match from decade to decade).
Regarding Gartner: They’re hacks who auction their “Product of the Year” off to the highest bidders. Deloitte… SNRK. Yeah, they trial’ed our product for a few weeks, then said “Nope, not interested” because we showed them too much wrong with their network. LOL. To say that I’m unsurprised that they ended up hacked is an understatement.
Quel dommage! In upstate New York there are a lot of French Canadians who migrated from Quebec for lumbering jobs in the Adirondacks and most high schools have French & Spanish courses. The French is Canadian, and the Spanish is Puerto Rican in many schools to make it a more marketable skill than academic French or Castilian Spanish.
Hell, the census forms in New York are just as bad, and on one form a distant cousin got switched from Henry to Henrietta by the interviewer. Imhof became Emhoff or Emhof on various forms, and Doemke became Dumka. Because of French pronunciation it makes a difference if the interviewer is a francophone who knows to include the unpronounced letters at the end of names.