There’s a storm coming. Its name is Bill. I call it Kill Bill, but I’m hoping it won’t be a killer storm. It is a hurricane right now, a Category Three, but forecasters suggest it could move back up the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale to a Four tomorrow. I hope it doesn’t. You can check out this site to see what the hurricane categories mean and what kind of damage can be expected (for example, if you live in a mobile home built before 1994, you are in trouble in any one of the categories).
We moved to Istanbul in August, 2003. In September of that year Hurricane Juan made landfall in Halifax and caused very extensive damage. We missed it but our house survived the storm without damage. From here you can see areas of dead trees over on McNab’s Island even now six years later, and Point Pleasant Park still shows signs of serious devastation; in fact, the wildfire that threatened our house at the end of April fed on the debris of dead trees from Juan. The thing that is particularly worrisome as Bill approaches is that Juan caused all the damage it did six years ago as a Category One hurricane, way down the scale from Bill's current status.
Today we took down the stage we have been using for painting the house and stacked it carefully on the ground. The sheets of plywood that have been protecting the deck are now safely stowed in the sheltered area next to the shed. Tomorrow, the day before Bill is expected to arrive, we will move the barbecue and all the deck furniture somewhere safe, away from windows and railings and anything else they could fly into and damage. We are in the process of battening down.
Today there was a light wind out of the south. The fogbank hung just beyond McNab’s all morning and began to drift in the harbour in the afternoon. Waves started breaking on the beach by the lighthouse, the first white water I’ve noticed over there in more than a week. Surf reports predict waves up to 3 metres on Saturday and 6 metres on Sunday, a sure sign of something coming even with hardly a breath of wind -- yet. And there seemed to be a lot of boats coming in the harbour, presumably looking for shelter from the storm.
I don’t know if we would have known a storm was coming if we hadn’t been checking the forecast and news reports over the last couple of days; that is, were there signs and portents that we would have noticed, or did we notice these things only because we knew Bill was tracking towards us? Whatever the answer, we feel that we can feel the storm coming, and we feel the need to get ready. Tomorrow we will fill the water containers and check that we have fuel and the Coleman works. We will locate the battery radio, candles, and matches. We will pick up anything around the house capable of becoming a projectile. And we will keep watching how Bill is tracking (here is a good source of information) and wait to see what happens.
My hope is that the colder water off our shore damps down this hurricane’s energy enough to lower its status a couple of categories or that it tracks far enough from here to limit us to a good gale from its edges. We will find out what Bill is up to (or down to) in a day or so, but we do know we will get a storm on Sunday and its name is Bill. We will try to be ready and we will be waiting.
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