Tropical storm Halong is on it’s way west now after making a mess of Guam for the day. I’m sick of writing about the weather, but this year we’ve just had bad luck. There have been a few close calls with typhoons and storms in the last couple of months. This morning (Wednesday) we were put in COR 1 (condition of readiness), which means typhoon winds are expected within 12 hours. The night before we were told that the storm would hit the next evening, but the next morning they said the storm had moved quicker than anticipated and would arrive at noon! I was a little worried because we weren’t prepared. When Peter was released from work, he stopped by the only store he could find that was still opened and bought some supplies.
I decided to cook brunch in case we lost electricity and sure enough, the power went out. Peter called GPA to report the outage and 20 minutes later the power came back on. I finished cooking, but at noon we had lost power again. We spent the next few hours listening to the radio, watching movies on my laptop, napping, and waiting. Thanks GPA for calling us throughout the day to make sure our power was still on!!
I wasn’t scared because the meteorologists didn’t seem too concerned about it escalating into anything more serious. The scary part, or the part that made me anxious, was that with out typhoon shutters closed I could hear loud noises outside, but couldn’t see what was happening. Occasionally we would open the door and check things out. The wind was SO strong and the rain was coming at us from all directions.
By 3:00PM Peter and I were STARVING. All we had available was dry food; rice cakes, granola, cereal, peanut butter, bananas; not very fulfilling. About 30 minutes later, our power came back on!!! We actually jumped for joy and ran to the kitchen and began cooking!
In Oregon, our weather is pretty much predictable. Sometimes in the summer we get windstorms, but they last 30 minutes and don’t cause much damage. So as you can imagine, neither of us having experienced this type and strength of a storm, we were a little nervous. I’m so thankful to K57 Newstalk radio who kept us calm and aware. That’s the best way to get news during a storm, so make sure to have a battery powered radio handy!
It’s still dark and rainy, but I’m relieved that the worst of the storm is over. Damage to the island was very minimal and all the villages are in clean up and recovery mode. I can’t wait for rainy season to be over!
