Well, It Could Be A Lot Worse

The latest from Weather Uunderground isn't great. It's not even good. But it is a whole lot better than the prognostico that Rina would arrive in Tulum as a Category 3 storm moving very slowly (3 mph).

I find myself saying things like, "Well, we've weatherred tropical storms before, many of them, so this is a little more wind than that, but this shouldn't be a really big problem." Then I shudder. I touch wood, I say "jinx," I say, "Kinahurrah." If I knew the Mayan expression to avert the evil I (I don't), I'd say it too.

By this time tomrrow the storm should be past Bahia Soliman and Nah Yaxche. Let's hope that everyone in the Mayan Riviera is safe and secure, that the storm is gentle, and that all are well in its wake.

The Caribe

The Caribe is churned up. There is a gigantic, hovering low, now called Invest 95, roosting over the Yucatan. Rain. Wind. Churned up sea. Everything dripping. In Bahia Soliman it just looks like this:

On Weather Underground it is much more dramatic and looks like this:

‘Tis the season. The mangrove, the lush plants, the cocos, the selva all need this inundation. It is what makes Tulum so green, the plants so dense, the air so clean. And your Bloguero? Reading, writing, napping, relaxing. Yes, your Bloguero loves the sun. And yes, it hasn’t really shone since Friday morning. But there is something luxurious, wonderful, exquisite about napping while the tropical rain falls on the roof and the cocos clack their leaves.

That Tropical Storm Thing: Richard

Goodness gracious. Yet again. Richard, the storm, not the deformed Shakespearian King, appears to have decided to run over Belize on its way to making a mess of the interior of Quintana Roo and Chiapas and Guatemala. I am relieved that it has decided not to try to come in the east facing door of my house in Bahia Soliman, just north of Tulum. Here's what it looks like (in an analytical, clean sort of way):

In an more earthly, less sanitary way, it looks like a gigantic mess. Tons of rain, lots of wind that makes rain feel like darts on your face. Deep mud. Things that are not tied down, flying around. Things that are tied down breaking and then flying around. Flying around things crashing into each other and stationary things, flying around things getting trapped in corners or against other things. Deep water. No electricity. A sound like a freight train. And so on. Sounds like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

And then the storm will have passed by. A relief. The sky will be blue. The sea will be turquoise. The birds will sing. It will be a beautiful, tropical, lovely day. Except that there's a big mess to be cleaned up.

Let's hope that all that's needed is clean up and that nobody gets hurt.

Tropical Storm Karl Coming Soon (To Me)

Please pardon the extremely low tech, wordy approach this extremely brief essay takes. I'm writing it "borrowing" Internet from my neighbor (who is away), so my laptop is sitting on the barbecue (no, it's not on) while I write this. I will not regale you (sorry for the wind pun) with why I don't have my own Internet this evening.

I'm in Bahia Soliman, which is just north of Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico. This afternoon I (and probably everyone else in the world who cares about this) learned that what we following as Invest 92 had indeed attained Tropical Storm Status (TST) and was now named TS Karl. TS Karl, the computer models and other models (imagine I had posted a map of that right here) is planning to come through the front door of my house tomorrow morning or afternoon. What's that mean? Who knows: it probably means up to 50 knot winds and up to 8" of rain. Knots, I am reliably told, are bigger than miles.

On one level, I consider this retribution. I have been working on my novel, working title "Tulum," here for more than a week. I am working in what IB Singer called the "literary factory," i.e. I write and I take breaks, I write and I take breaks, repeat and repeat again ad infinitum. So it is I who wrote the Hurricane scenes in the book, and now I have "called" in a real storm with my maniacal focus on storms. It's "the law of attraction" gone crazy, if you will. Or it's the Damapada. I am what I think, and I've been thinking a lot about TS's and Hurricanes, if you will. If you won't, fine, but it's thundering as I type this.

On another level, I consider this a study in how most people in the US don't give a rat's ass about what happens in Mexico. They and their media are obsessing about what will happen when the storm leaves the Yucatan Peninsula and heads towards South Texas. If TS Karl decides instead to come ashore (again) in Mexico the story won't merit a 1" column on page 23 of your local newspaper. But if it should head for Texas, there will be guys with slickers standing in the surf and reporting every 3 minutes on what it feels like.

Hell, I can tell you "what it feels like." And I'm not wearing one of those jackets. It feels like tomorrow the weather is really gonna suck here. High wind, lots of rain, high tides, flooding. You've seen it before on TV, right? It makes a mess of things.

I have taken my book, all almost 80,000 words of it, and saved the entire thing on two key drives, and put them in a safe, where they will be dry, no matter what. I will also put this 10 year old lap top, whose aging memory also contains my book, in a safe place. Everything of value is in a place where it cannot get ruined. By wind. By water. By anything. Everything that's not tied down is likely to end up in the next state, which is Campeche, and in Mayan means, the place of snakes and scorpions. In other words, you will not likely retrieve any of it.

Meanwhile, many of us stand on the beach looking at the lightning, listening to the wind, watching the tide.