Christine Hudnall

Can you believe the weather recently?

While winter storms, snow, tornadoes, hail, wind and whatnot have been keeping some in the U.S. busy, down in the Caribbean, the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, and Cuba had to worry about Hurricane Paloma, a very powerful Hurricane Paloma at that. And a 6.5 magnitude earthquake struck in northwest China, in the remote Qinghai provence. The China Earthquake Administration confirmed the quake, but said that according to their scales, it was a 6.3 mag quake. As of this posting, I still found no information on if there were any casualties or what kind of damages, so, because this was a remote area, let us hope that there were none. Wouldn’t that be awesome. On a side note, just in the last 7 days, the Puerto Rico region has been highly active coming in with unofficial count of 102 earthquakes! That is not including the Virgin Islands region, nor the Dominican Republic region, but just what is listed for the Puerto Rico region. Holy Cow!

On Wednesday, November 5th, Tropical Depression SEVENTEEN formed near Honduras and Nicaragua. As of the 4:00AM advisory issued by the National Hurricane Center for November 6th, SEVENTEEN, was now Tropical Storm Paloma and the Cayman Islands were already being told to keep monitoring the storm. From the 7:00PM intermediate advisory, Tropical Storm Paloma is now Hurricane Paloma and had now started her predicted turn to the north, instead of north-northwest. Hurricane warnings were now in effect for the Caymans, with Cuba and Jamaica monitoring closely.

As of 7:00AM, on Friday, November 7th, hurricane watches were issued for some provinces in Cuba, as the Cayman Islands braced for Paloma to arrive sometime late Friday night or Saturday. She was still a category 1 storm, with strengthening likely to happen, bringing her to category 2, possibly even 3.

At the 4:00PM update, Paloma was a category 2 hurricane and already starting to lash her winds over Grand Cayman. The government of Cuba upgraded the hurricane watches to hurricane warnings for the provinces of Sancti Spiritus, Ciego de Avila, Camaguey and Las Tunas. She was now heading north-northeast, having finally made her turn sometime between 10:00AM and 1:00PM. At the 7:00PM update, Paloma was upgraded to a category 3 hurricane, which is a major hurricane, listed with a damage level of extensive.

On the 10:00PM update (still Friday!), the first thing the update starts off with is:

…MAJOR HURRICANE PALOMA LASHING GRAND CAYMAN WITH STRONG WINDS AND HEAVY RAINS…
…NOW HEADING TOWARD LITTLE CAYMAN AND CAYMAN BRAC…

… she is now heading northeast and was expected to either pass near or over Little Cayman and Cayman Brac.

Image link will take you to the full image
Hurricane Paloma eyewall right next to (if not on it) Cayman Brac island.

Saturday, November 8th, the National Hurricane Center issued an update at 5:08AM - Paloma was now an extremely dangerous category 4 hurricane, with sustained winds now at 135mph. By 7:00AM winds had increased to 140mph and Paloma was just southeast of Cayman Brac. Some warnings were discontinued and added others as she headed toward Cuba.

At the 4:00PM update, winds had increased to 145mph and she was about 75 miles south-southwest of Camaguey, Cuba and headed toward the south-central coast of Cuba, expected to emerge in the Atlantic sometime late Sunday.

At 6:20PM the National Hurricane Center sent out the following update:

AT APPROXIMATELY 620 PM EST…2320 UTC…HIGH-RESOLUTION GOES SATELLITE DATA AND A RECENT POSITION FIX FROM AN AIR FORCE RESERVE UNIT HURRICANE HUNTER AIRCRAFT…PLUS SURFACE OBSERVATIONS AND RADAR DATA FROM CUBA…INDICATE THAT MAJOR HURRICANE PALOMA LIKELY MADE LANDFALL NEAR SANTA CRUZ DEL SUR CUBA AS A STRONG CATEGORY 3 HURRICANE WITH MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS NEAR 125 MPH…200 KM/HR.

… yes, you read that correctly, according to the update she had weakened a little before she made landfall, but I’m sure that the people that were dealing with it were not saying, whew, that was close, at least it wasn’t a cat 4! No, when going through a major hurricane, that 20 miles per hour difference is negligible to how you perceive it. Damage wise, well, and remember I am absolutely no expert, but as far as I can tell, from past experience, the damage would be about the same. I know, there are those out there who are far more knowledgeable than I am who are saying it makes a big difference, but I haven’t seen a lot of difference for 20mph. That is just my opinion, for what it is worth. (It is interesting to note however, that according to several news sources online that I found, they say that per the NHC Paloma was still a category 4 when she made landfall near Santa Cruz del Sur. Just Google: news hurricane Paloma landfall Cuba. Yes, I know, I just finished saying earlier the difference doesn’t matter all that much when going through it, just thought it was interesting, that’s all.)

As of 10:00PM last night (Sunday), parts of Paloma were still over Cuba, but had weakened during the day back down to a tropical depression with sustained winds around 30mph, with the final remnants expected to emerge from the north coast of Cuba, sometime during the night/this morning. Still not a lot of information at this time coming out of Cuba, but that is to be expected, I’m sure that everything is still being assessed and from what I read a major communications tower was toppled.

You can read about the damages and recovery efforts for the Cayman Islands at the Cayman Net News Online. From what I read, anywhere between 75 - 95% of homes and businesses have been damaged, with some being completely devastated, depending on which article you read.

My thoughts and prayers are with all that have gone through Paloma and will have to face the recovery part, especially those in Cuba, as they are still trying to recover from Hurricane’s Gustav and Ike, which hit in August and September of this year. And always to those here in the U.S. as you recover from all of your crazy weather happenings.

Wow, this post is so long, so I won’t talk much more, but did want to share a new feature that has been implemented. I sort of wrote about it already, but did not have it working quite like it should. Well, I tweaked a little here and there, and ‘think’ that I have it as far as I can get it.

What is it you might be wondering, well, it is called live-comments-preview. What it does is exactly what it says, it shows you live, as you type, what your comment will look like! And, for those that have gravatars, it is supposed to include your gravatar in the comment. On that part I cannot comment, since I do not have one, so, for myself and those without, we will just have to be content with just our names. Oh the horrors! ;-)

Live Comment Preview Plugin

It is a plugin that works with Wordpress, I do not think that other programs can use it, but you can always ask Brad, he added the gravatar support and fixed some bugs, and is now continuing the development of it.

Go ahead and test it out - just don’t get too scared. The colors and font-size, etc. while adding comment in preview, are strictly just for the preview. It will look a little different once you submit the comment.

To my thinking, it is easier with the live preview, since there is no scrolling back in the text-box, you can immediately see if you made a typo, well, that is if you know how to spell to start with. :-D

I hope that you like it and will make use of it, and if you use WP, go and grab it from the plugin page listed above.

Enjoy - have fun - and have a great day!