CONTRIBUTED BY MEREDITH NOVARIO
You're safe and dry, right? And your lawn or sidewalk is piled high with typhoon carnage. And your power is on. And the windows are quiet. And the dog isn't a quivering parasite on your left leg. And you've stopped panicking about the possibility of the windows blowing in which means you've also stopped putting your children to bed with blankets over their heads because that is FAR less dangerous than what flying glass could do to flesh.
And the ants are back. So they're also safe.
We made it, we did. You and me.
Cheers.
Now tell me, how did you keep track of the storm and what condition the base was in? Me, I called Kaho and asked what the Japanese TV had to say. Seems like I could have been a smidge more in the know.
At one point (just before the eye of the storm passed overhead), the filter cap in our kitchen sink was jumping out of the drain with each strong gust of wind. Craziness..
Video of the storm here:
link to youtube.com
No power, Romila! So sorry about that. That must have been a rough night for sleeping. Glad you’re all up and running again. And thanks for the site.
All clear here at Toguchi Beach. We lost power for 24 hours… 24 very hot and humid hours, ugh! Until that point, we tracked the typhoon online at link to typhoon2000.ph.
This morning, there were a couple of kitesurfers on the beach, crazy!
I was stuck at work so Julia had the kids the whole time. We were lucky and the power stayed on the whole time otherwise, I’m not sure if Julia would of made it. I’m glad we took our sat dish down, I’ve seen a lot of people fixing theirs. Our play gym on the roof survived even though it was tied down with the hose(still attached to the faucet, what was I thinking!). Typhoon2000 and Kadena weather were good. link to weather.kadenaservices.com
On base here at Kadena several huge trees were uprooted and we saw a truck that the wind had tipped onto a smaller pickup. Very amazing. There is plant carnage all over the place here. Luckily though, we lost neither electricity nor cable in our on base neighborhood. Sorry about the 24 hour power loss Romila. You could’ve come over to our place if I’d known!
We heard about the typhoon all the way here in TX. I used to love the forced relaxation of a good typhoon, but this one sounded gi-normous! I hope everyone’s okay. It sounded like power was still out for a lot of you, though they don’t differentiate between the island of Okinawa and the Keramas when they report things over here.
Glad to hear you guys made it through ok. I was always impressed by those concrete buildings!
I work nights, so the morning that Man-Yi swept through I was sleeping. I’d wake up every now and then when the house swayed, but other than that the worse part was when one of our balconies’ drain was stopped up, and water started running into the house, through the kitchen ceiling.
It was like, “Oh hey, a wet spot, we’ll have to tell the housing agency…okay two wet spots…now it’s dripping…now there’s a small stream running down the wall…now it’s time to get the goretex and see what’s going on out there!” I’m sure the neighbors had a laugh watching some crazy gaijin bail out his balcony like his life depended on it.
We lost power a couple times, but nothing major. Even made it through the entire fourth season of MacGyver no problem!
I agree with sirk, it’s nice to have the forced down time, so long as you don’t trade one pile for another.
do they have the same typhoon warnings and conditions on and off base?
link to cimss.ssec.wisc.edu
awesome site – if a little hurricane/tropical storm swirl shows up on the map, you can click on it for detail and then check off different views in the check boxes (infrared and all other kinds of views that are cool).
also Japanese radar: link to weathernews.jp
click on the lower left (by Okinawa) and enlarge it – then you can enlarge it again. During typhoons this is so key, and it’s in constant motion – no English necessary!
(see what you get when I’m testing links and find an old blog post that I could’ve commented on?)
Ok, I’ll join in, Aviva!
Another good link that I gave to my parents/fam during Man-yi:
link to tsr.mssl.ucl.ac.uk
Enjoy!