Auntie Irene coming to visit

Suzie Too - Western Caribbean
David & Suzanne Chappell
Tue 23 Aug 2011 17:58
Well so much for our plans of leaving Thursday. I have my Google home page set up with a Hurricane Watch gadget and have tracked them all steadily thro the alphabet and most hgave gone across the Gulf of Mexico or out to sea over Bermuda, all well south of us.
 
Hurricane Irene is a Major Hurricane and set to come and visit over the weekend, we were going to Atlantic City, where it should be down to a Cat 3 and by the time it arrives 100M with us off the coast of New York, should be down to a Cat 1, so winds down to 74-95 mph. I have been tracking the GRIB files and it looks like Atlantic City will get winds of around 50kts and New York around 40kts, as the Irene should track north east towards the UK and be downgraded as a Tropical Storm.
 
So we are staying put, until at least Monday. I did watch something about the Royal Marines on HMS Manchester in the Eastern Caribbean riding out Hurricane Tomas and once the hurricane passes the storm surge settles down in a day or so. Well we managed the Boxing Day Tsunami, so now our first hurricane, as we left Florida the day before Hurricane Andrew devastated it in 1986, so missed that one!
 
I have just been up the Marina Office and watched the TV Weather Channel and they do love a disaster our American cousins, so we will be keeping track.