Thursday morning I woke up and it was pouring rain. Not too much of a surprise, as it's rainy/hurricane season. The rain got pretty crazy and sometime around 10:00 am, Keith called to tell me that campus was closing because of a storm surge. The Prime Minister ordered that every thing on the island be closed and people return home. So, naturally I put all of our buckets outside to catch rainwater so that we could flush the toilet if the water went out, turned on the AC to cool the apartment, because I knew the power was going to go out, and jumped in the shower. I'm not sure that was the best choice, seeing how it honestly was liquid mud, but---what do you do?
Ironically, the rain stopped and the worst of the storm had hit before 10:00. It was Hurricane Omar, which was somewhere up by Puerto Rico but we caught a little of the tail end of it. Later, our landlord stopped by to see how we rode out the storm and told us that in Portsmouth (just down the road) some ships and barges had washed up! BIG ships and barges! He said that everything was a mess and some of the roads were blocked off. So, later that afternoon, my friend Natalynn and I walked down to see what all the fuss was about. Turns out, Nick was right. Everything was a mess!
Here's a look at some of the waves. The Caribbean Sea is normally VERY calm, but here it looks more like the Atlantic during a storm.
As you can see, hours after the worst of the storm, the sea was still crashing up onto the road.
This was on the street that runs along the bay front. The streets were covered in sand and small fishing boats were washed up everywhere. They got washed up and over the street, the waves were crazy!
(Check out that pile of sand and debris that was washed up--they had what looked like a small snow plow scraping sand off of the streets)
All of these boats had washed up, from small fishing boats to great big boats!
All of these boats are beached on the shore---not a good thing! We heard that you have to hire a tug boat from Miami to get boats like these pulled off shore! (not cheap!)
Luckily the bus stop is here, or else this boat probably would have been sitting in the street!
Ironically, the rain stopped and the worst of the storm had hit before 10:00. It was Hurricane Omar, which was somewhere up by Puerto Rico but we caught a little of the tail end of it. Later, our landlord stopped by to see how we rode out the storm and told us that in Portsmouth (just down the road) some ships and barges had washed up! BIG ships and barges! He said that everything was a mess and some of the roads were blocked off. So, later that afternoon, my friend Natalynn and I walked down to see what all the fuss was about. Turns out, Nick was right. Everything was a mess!
Here's a look at some of the waves. The Caribbean Sea is normally VERY calm, but here it looks more like the Atlantic during a storm.
As you can see, hours after the worst of the storm, the sea was still crashing up onto the road.
This was on the street that runs along the bay front. The streets were covered in sand and small fishing boats were washed up everywhere. They got washed up and over the street, the waves were crazy!
(Check out that pile of sand and debris that was washed up--they had what looked like a small snow plow scraping sand off of the streets)
All of these boats had washed up, from small fishing boats to great big boats!
All of these boats are beached on the shore---not a good thing! We heard that you have to hire a tug boat from Miami to get boats like these pulled off shore! (not cheap!)
Luckily the bus stop is here, or else this boat probably would have been sitting in the street!
So, instead of a snow day, like we are used to back home, today we had a "Rain Day." Awesome.
