Tomas Comes & Goes

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Today, Barbados was the first target of the tropical wave turned tropical storm turned hurricane, Tomas, a fiesty storm with a lot of spunk to share. Without warning, we were hit with brutal winds and rain. Tomas was reported as a strong tropical wave on Friday evening and by 11pm the same night, Barbados was under hurricane warning. How did that happen?

I went to bed one night to some overcast skies and a little rain and I was woken up by a text from my cousin celebrating that she didn't have to do her music exam today because the island's on lockdown. Wait. What? On lockdown? What happened overnight?! I'm a pretty heavy sleeper so I really didn't hear the gusts of winds and heavy showers that went on while I was living happily in dreamland. Oh, and then I realised that electricity had left us.

Photo by: Kreigg Yearwood

We don't have a battery operated radio at home but I was lucky to have charged up my battery last night! So that was my radio for the day. Listening in on 94.7 FM, I heard of all the damages and atrocities happening around the island by, at the time, tropical storm Tomas. Things were pretty light in my area but it sounded to me that St. John had the biggest burden. Roofs went flying, pailings went flying, trees started falling and taking some power lines down with them. One lady even reported that a power line in front her home was on fire. And a few people lost their homes to the strong gusts that wound up to hurricane force winds in some parts of the island. Poor souls. Lucky for them, there are people around who are willing to lend some homeless families shelter.

Photo by: Stefon Griffith

Tropical storm Tomas was upgraded to a category 1 hurricane by 11 a.m. this morning. Err? Yeah, that's right. A tropical wave became a hurricane in much less than 24 hours (I'd say about 15 hours). And Barbados was in the centre of it all. Slightly unusual, no?

Waking up at 5:40 a.m. and being without electricity for the following 11 hours, I've had a rather uneventful day and some difficulty studying for my upcoming exam on Thursday. At the moment, it's still a bit windy and rainfall has been heavily on and off all afternoon. With the reinstatement of my electricity, came the re-establisment of my internet and so, here I am! Unfortunately, many parts of the island won't be so lucky as they'll be without electricity over the next few days as the Barbados Light & Power works hard to fix the fallen poles and broken lines.

Who'll be in line for Tomas' terror next?

Feel free to comment and share your Tomas experience here. =)

Rain Rain, Come This Way!

It's been raining intermittently almost everyday from last week. And it's been lovely. But only while the rain falls. The temperature cools down, the sun is hidden behind the grey clouds. It also gets quite humid, but I think I prefer that to the burning sensation the sun's rays send to us.

Yesterday, I went to the hospital for a lecture and my usual drive took twice as long with the little bits of flooding occurring here and there on the way. Barbados is a small flat little island whose roads were not constructed for proper draining. So water collects fairly quickly with rain that would fall for only 15 minutes and the result can below. I was driving slow enough to snap some photos.

Taken in the same area on the same road. Sidewalk? Not visible.

The rain was still falling when I went into the hospital and I exited about 1.5-2 hours later into bright sunlight once more. If I hadn't been in the rain, I wouldn't have guessed that it rained at all in same places. Where lots of water collected, it was either completely dried up without a sign of water or there was a small puddle left. Any other indications would have included some excess mud on the roads. Of course, the sun was shining brightly and it was as hot as ever.

Sun + high humidity = Not cool

Some of the water would have drained off from the roads. But to see how dry the sidewalks and roads were, is a pretty clear indication of how hot our sun is to have dried everything so quickly. As said by a friend of mine:

"The sun that shines over Barbados is the sun that shines on Hell."

Oh, yes. No sun burns like ours. Believe it.

No more drought?

The rain came out to play today! After 2-3 months of no rain, we finally got almost a full day of light rainfall. It was lovely. The air was cool. The temperature was so perfect compared to all the heat. The air was humid too but it's expected from so much rain.

Of course, constantly light rain for more than half the day tends to make you want to sleep in all day long. No work. Just chill out.

I hope the rain comes out to play again tomorrow!

Probability of Precipitation: 0%

Today's weather

The sky: blue

The clouds: white and fluffy like little cotton balls

The sun: blindingly bright

The grass: light brown

The soil: lighter than the brown grass...and cracked

The hedge: becoming leafless

This is pretty much how every day looks. The chance of rain these days is non-existent. At this point in the game, we're not to water the plants in our gardens or risk being reported by a neighbour. Not that my university cares much. There's still a lot of green grass there.

So, if you'd like to escape your weather, come visit mine! The nice sun is ideal for vacationing. And the temperatures seem to rise continuously with each passing day.

Those of you getting an overload of rain and snow, feel free to haul some of that precipitation my way! This country is dying of thirst!

Drought?

I'm sure I've mentioned this numerous times before. But for those who don't know:

I hate living in Barbados.

Why? Because it's hot, among other things. The heat makes me lethargic and irritable. I hate always feeling like I want to sleep because my body is heating up and my brain becomes tired and unable to concentrate on the task at hand. Today was one perfect example.

How is it that all of a sudden it started feeling like 50 degrees Celsius outside and my house just spontaneously turned into an oven? At this time of the year the sun is usually "cooler" so the temperatures actually feel like the 30 degrees or so that the thermometer claims. As a result, I've never turned on the AC unit in my house during the months of December to March or even April. Not today. Today, the air condition was turned on and set to the lowest temperature. Because I couldn't take it anymore.

The hottest temperatures are really felt from September to November but today felt like a typical July day. Insane.

Ah yes. Did I mention that it hasn't rained in over two weeks? At least not where I'm living. We've had to water down the gardens everyday. It's so sad to see. The soil was so thirsty and cracked in just a single day. And today the water pressure is so low. Of course, to say Barbados is experiencing a period of drought can't quite be accurate, can it? After all, it is a small island surrounded by miles of miles of ocean. We may not have rain, but we sure have lots of water around. Well, I believe it would be more accurate to say we're having ourselves a little dry spell.

The sun doesn't look so cute in real life. In fact, it is my belief that it is much like a mean old man looking to share his heated anger with the world.

I can't wait for the opportunity to move away to a more favourable climate for my body. Because this isn't gonna work for me for the rest of my life. Certainly not.

Let The Floodgates Open!

Monday afternoon was a pretty heavy afternoon in terms of rain, thunder and lightning! The weather in Trinidad is pretty wacky on it's own: super hot and sunny with a sudden change in weather - rain and thunder for a couple of hours - then the return of the sun till it sets. Well, just when I thought it was another one of the wacky days of Trinidadian weather, it was about 3 times heavier than usual.

Electricity went out in some areas. At home it was for about 10 minutes. At work it was a good few hours. The flooding was way worse at the office than at home but either way no one could get anywhere easily.

After a few hours, we looked outside and it was just totally flooded out!

Apparently, there was a tornado somewhere in central Trinidad too!

Both pictures taken outside my Dad's office

It all dried up after a couple of hours, of course. Didn't take incredibly long. At least the heat is good for something. =P

Downpour

Our only living tree which has yet to bear any fruit and some ficus plants that aren't growing too well.
A uniformly cloudy sky and some not-so-green grass beyond our fence.

There's apparently a not-so-little system hanging over Barbados and from the satellite pictures I've seen, looks like our lovely weather may persist for a couple more days. Of course, I'm not one to predict the weather, after all, I'm a medical student not a meteorologist but that's just my very vague amateur's guess. =)

While the skies throw water down onto the earth keeps the temperature far from sizzling, I did only just wash the SUV yesterday. If the rain keeps up till tomorrow, it'll get all dirty again =( That's the part I don't like. Not to mention, I just realised that another downside of a lot of rain means that there are more millipedes trying to make a home out of my own home. Not well appreciated by one who's got a phobia of anything with waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many legs o.O *shudders*

Other than that, I love the rain. We don't get it often enough and at least it keeps are soil from going dry and us from having to water them every day so that what few plants we've got living around the house don't die. =) But then again, this flat little island doesn't do well when too much rain falls at any one time. Areas get flooded out pretty badly after a day, or even a few hours, of heavy rain. Too flat. I live on a hill so I don't get that problem much.

Despite it all, I'm in love with the rain anyways. =)