Hurricane Omar

When in doubt, it can always get worse. This morning school was canceled on account of Hurricane Omar, which is came out of the blue. It started as a tropical storm, they always do, and yesterday grew into a Category 1 Hurricane. Today it has progressed from a 1 to a 2 and is now a Cat 3! It's heading directly for St Croix and St Kitts too. Super.

Hurricanes almost never come from the west and head east, Omar's direction. The west side of the St Kitts is typically protected from storms with the volcano and mountains, if the storm comes from Africa. With Omar, I'm completely vulnerable! The last hurricane that did this, wiped out Port Zante in Basseterre (the capital of St Kitts). Figures.

To avoid more make up classes, we adamantly urged our prof to continue with the Anaesthesia lecture, even when the power went off, came back on, and then the computer system (for ppt) failed. School is canceled tomorrow to, unless "the sky is blue, the sun is shining, and the birds are out." We were urged to go to the grocery store to stock up on food/water, and to fill our cars up with gas. I have about half a tank. (I fill up ~1x/mo and with it being the 15th, that's about my standard usage.)

I found a wandering paniced 3rd semester student from Texas and invited her to go to the grocery store with me (she has no car). We went to Ram's and were shocked that there was absolutely NO parking. The roads were congested, the neighboring parking lots were full, and they had run out of shopping carts. Nevertheless, we braved the crowd.

It didn't take us long to grab the few items we needed (like toilet paper), but the check out lines wrapped around the isles. It took over an hour to check out. I had wanted to get gas, but as we left, we were so fatigued from the grocery store that we couldn't bare to wait in the literally 3 hour line to fill up a tank.

Living without electricity for so long, I think I'm pretty prepared. The power cam on early afternoon today, which was an odd, pleasant feeling. I was a bit shocked; I wasn't expecting it.

The cable has been intermittent, but that's about as exciting as my dad has gotten. It's been raining all day, but just started getting windy. Like, 30-40 mph windy now, to develop into 110 mph windy. I'm going to go back to sleep. If you want to monitor the storm or Caribbean weather in general, go to the Atlantic Loop on NOAA.


I really wonder how things can get worse (although I know they can), but seriously, don't you think that 5 exams, a car accident, dead car battery, a dead baby goat, no electricity, no clean drinking water, no cooking gas, a stomach illness from eating on campus, a centipede in my bed, and now a hurricane hitting me straight on is a little much for October?

Five people at school have been out with Dengue Fever. They all live on my street (we found were the mosquitoes were breeding). I bet that's next. Or my car breaks down or is carried off by the storm. Sigh. This is too much drama. Wow, the wind has really picked up now. Wish it were daylight and I could take picts.