Thursday, September 04, 2008

Wild Weather

The weather here on Bonaire has been hot and sultry for a couple weeks now. Basically when storms pass through the northern Caribbean, they shut down the trade winds down here in the south where we are. One night last week the southwest horizon was lit up with an amazing light show. The lightning flashes were bright and frequent enough that it reminded Sandra of the strobe lights one sees when having an EEG. It was awesome, but a little weird too.
I'm not sure how these pix will look for you. They are of a type that will depend a lot on how bright your monitor is compared to mine. Back in my youth when I was living, cycling, and skiing in the fridged winter months, we paid attention to the wind chill factor that made it seem colder than the thermometer was indicating. I had to be careful about my prone to frostbite nose.
Well, apparently there is a warm weather factor as well. A friend just told Sandra that the NOAA reported that considering the temperature, lack of wind, and humidity, (I'd throw in Sun intensity too, but I don't know if they do) it feels like 120 degrees F on Bonaire these days. That makes me feel better, (well mentally at least) 'cause the thermometer is only registering temps in the low 90s, yet we've been melting. I've had an amazing lack of energy, even on my early 6 to 7:30 am bike rides. When we take a shower at mid day, we set the tap to the hot water position, because the sun heated water coming out of the cold water line is unbearably hot, and the nice insulated water heater isn't set that high.
But it could be worse, we're not bearing the brunt of all those storms. We really have to laugh when we watch the so called Tropical Update on the Weather Channel. There'll be this big storm just beating the living !%$#**&! out of Hispanola and the people on the TV spend most of the session waxing eloquent about if the storm is likely to hit the USA.
The islands are taking a beating. Here is what Georgina, the director of the Trans World Radio ministries in the Dominican Republic has to report. "Please keep praying. Some times I prefer not say too much of our happenings because I’m afraid of sounding dramatic, but life here for me is like an action movie. The stormy season is giving us a lot of hard times. My heart is broken because of those homeless. Most of the city is suffering long power outages. Not all our activities are able to go on normally because they depend on whether or not our staff and guests are able to get to our offices. I am able to get here because I drive the office car and I live 8 minutes far, and usually my way is safe."

2 comments:

QBall said...

I would definitely agree with your post... we were in Bonaire from Aug 16th - 23rd and i was amazed at the weather pattern. We've visited Bonaire once a year for the past 4 years and it rained more this time than all of our previous times put together. I didn't realize it until my wife brought it up on the return home, but i didn't even get sunburned!

All in all it was still a great trip. We found two new places to eat that reminded the kids of 'american' food; Pizza bon Pasa and China Nobo. I was surprised... both very tasty.

Your pictures are terrific by the way. I can't believe the stars in the background!

Anonymous said...

Great pictures. Indeed it is odd how they will spend so much time in the media going over whether a storm might cause a lot of rain or whatever in the US, when it has just made thousands of people homeless in Cuba or south America for example.