Hurricane Isaac and more

Good afternoon,

Being a superstitious sailor in the Grenadines I was reluctant to post anything on Isaac so far.
He has been a bit of a troublesome storm to predict (what's in a name, right?) and still is.
Here in the Grenadines we had LOADS of rain and some very gusty winds from all directions.
To my knowledge only a few boats hit each other caused by shifting winds, some dragged anchor, but the only very unfortunate thing that happened was the ship that managed to get himself stranded east, yes east, of West Cay.

Probably due to poor visibility captain did not interpret the light on West Cay correctly.


Thanks to Christian Schrijver, who took this picture, the crew is safe.
He caught the Mayday and went out in his little dinghy to see if he could help.

The weather was awful, you are one heroic good sailor.



What is next for Isaac? As we speak, Isaac is AGAIN trying to make up his mind where he wants to form a center, so it is a wait and see now.


Meanwhile, news and weather forecasts and speculations will be coming in on Isaac, especially since he still has a possibility to hit Tampa where a pretty major political even is scheduled to take place.
However, we are now looking at the Africa computer models, they are in quite good agreement that the next storm will form off Africa next week. So far all storms have followed more or less the same track, Kirk next?

All the best, Maria

Ernesto first storm for the Grenadines?

Hello everyone,

And it is official!!! Ernesto is here.
At this moment there is a high chance, 70% that a low pressure area in the Atlantic will become a tropical storm within the next 48 hours and that it will be very close to us. As of this writing the system is at 12N 48W, and the forward track is slightly WNW.
2 of the reliable computer models have it tracking directly over Bequia. The system will be named Ernesto if further strengthening into a tropical storm.
The government has issued a press release, part of it here (it is a holiday today)

"The St. Vincent and the Grenadines Meteorological Office will continue to monitor the development of this system and will be issuing further statements on its progress over the next few days."

 

Interesting tidbit: in 2006 tropical storm/hurricane Ernesto was named just a few miles west of Mayreau, it became the most costly tropical storm/hurricane of that year, estimated $500 million in damage and 11 deaths.

See track from Wikipedia archives to the left.

Lets hope history does not repeat itself.

Be careful everybody, these computers are good but they don't know everything, this is still the weather!

I include a link here that gives you the current situation, we are after all in 2012:

http://www.wunderground.com/tropical/tracking/at201299_model.html

All the best, Maria

PS. Whoops, at 17.00 1st August, minutes after I wrote the above, it is now Tropical depression number 5 located at 12.2N 49W. At this moment we are under a tropical storm watch.