Hurricane pressure

Thanks for the kind words. We made it through yesterday, but Paulette was slow moving making it a very long day.

This is a satellite image of Hurricane Paulette moving over Bermuda yesterday with the eye right over the island. If you can zoom in you will see the island in the middle.

That was around 8am, and the peace and blue sky that follows is pretty surreal. The absence of that eerie whistling sound, the crashing of branches and trees and creaking windows disappeared for almost two hours before the backside of the storm moved onto us, and she was hefty old bird.

It’s hard to explain but with the house battened down you feel the air pressure inside rising. The walls are substantial here (for good reason) with limestone roofs and the air is thick. Many here suggest slightly opening windows to relieve that air pressure, but scientists say that is a sure way for roofs to lift off.

We sat it out playing board games, eating crips, listening to the emergency radio station and when the clock moved on a bit to make it acceptable we cracked open some wine. There was probably another 10 hours of hurricane force winds surrounding us, but weirdly little rain before dear Paulette strengthened and moved away to annoy someone else.

The power coming back on is always a celebratory moment, and credit to the Belco people again for working so hard in appalling conditions to bring the island back to life. Our lights flickered on as did blissfully our air con at around 8.30 last night.

24,000 households out of the 36,000 metered ones on island were without power and there is a fair amount of roof damage and storm surge in low lying areas, plus the obliagtory downed trees strewed across roads and lanes.

Overall though our experience was a million times better at this new house compared to our old one, although the garden is a mess, our WiFi is at best patchy and we don’t have any working toilets!

Now we face the threat of Hurricane Teddy, which is on our way to us and is packing a lot more power. For now the house will stay in hurricane mode as five named storms circle the Atlantic Ocean like birds of prey.