Tropical Storm Odette: It's not the end!

[LynnCox]

definitely more eastern..

I have to agree with everything that I am reading as the storm surely must've taken a more eastwardly turn. Seems to me one of the big problems is that the NHC tends to downgade anything headed or that has hit our island...it doesn't affect them in the USA!! When I spoke to them (in Miami) Friday afternoon they said that they didn't know the terrain here well and wasn't sure what the storm surge would be, if any. We should expect lots of rain and some winds. It was expected to make landfall west of SDQ. I surely don't think anyone realized how damaging the eastern sheers were going to be.

According to my boyfriend in SDQ, a tree was uprouted in front of our apartment, broke the cement and has of course blocked 2 cars in their parking spaces.

Although it made landfall so far west from us, I guess no one expected the eastern end to be hammered. It is not always what is in it's direct path that suffers the most or where the highest amount of danger is..this is something I have come to learn in the past 5+ years of being here.

I've heard that Isla Saona is torn apart. I see huge trees (roots and all) out in the ocean. I had to get out the binoculars, I thought it was a capsided little fisher boat!

Again, am bummed I didn't have my digital camera last night or this am, would've loved to share some pics as have been shared on the other board. Those are fantastic.

Ciao

 

[XanaduRanch]

Re: We woke up to sun, slight overcast

No breeze. No rain. We went to sleep last night to heavy rain, but no wind. Odette peter out? I was just looking at the satellite images and i think that Odette turned right and did not follow the predicted path but rather went much further East than Northeast! What do you think Tom?

We've had a good deal of wind, about an inch of rain total. The winds peaked at 37 mph here in gusts around 3-4am. That's not much for a midwesterner, but it's the highest I've seen here at Xanadu. Previous was 32 mph one breezy day here, and 46 mph in a thunderstorm in Sosua a few years back. Even that little 37 mph wind though has been knocking over some trees in the saturated ground here and there. Nothing serious though.

Hard to tell where Odette went really using just sat photos because the center was always obscured by cloudcover, and as it hit the high terrain the center rapidly diffused. I would say that if it had entered further east around La Romana and headed north it would have been more of a storm for the north because the terrain is less rugged. Would have actually helped Lynn a bit because the heavy surf and surge then would have been east of her. It appears to have gone right over the highest terrain on the island. I expected that if that happened the south part of the island would get all the rain, orographically induced, and I think that's exactly what went on based on the observations posted.

Tom (aka XR)

 

[Bolt]

The rain really packed a punch earlier in the day here in Juan Dolio from the first squall which is way to the right of the eye on the sat images. That must have dumped at least 2 or 3 inches of rain on us during the day as our pool over flowed twice despite dropping it a few inches each time.

The winds picked up a little around 8 pm and probably gusted to around 30 to 40 MPH around 11.30. Then all went quite and I thought that was it. However, around 1.30 am the palm trees were really leaning over and garden furniture was beggining to move around the yard. By 2 am to 2.30 it appeared to peak and my guess is was was getting something like 50 MPH gusts by which time we lost power for a couple of hours. I was in bed by this time and only peeped out a couple of times to see what was happening.

The rain drove in to every crack in our appartment through to doors and metal shutter windows but ended quite abrupt as the storm headed away.

Nothing too out of the ordinary for most of us though as winter storms in the UK can easily pack 90 to 100 MPH winds on the coasts.