Hurricane Igor – On it's way to Bermuda Friday 17 September 2010

If you didn’t know (perhaps you were in a coma for the past few days) Hurricane Igor is bearing down on Bermuda and to all intents and purposes it looks like a direct hit (although ever the optimist I have a bet placed that says it will be off by 78 miles).

Since Monday last, we have been hearing that Igor is heading this way, but with so many watches and warnings in effect lately for this storm and that storm it was hard to really take it seriously but now we are bracing ourselves for a biggie. 

The papers and news reporters (far and wide) are reporting that this is “probably the worst storm we have ever seen” – now that’s something when you consider the damage that Hurricane Fabian did to Bermuda back in 2007.  

Here are a couple of pictures taken post Fabian:

Believe it or not this is the road that runs along to South Shore by John Smiths Bay - unrecognisable as a road, now back to a good road again and hopefully able to withstand Igor.

This one is a picture of the airport post hurricane - no planes were able to land there for two days until it had been cleared.

Anyway, back to Igor “the Terrible” as it’s been nicknamed.  Our local government has stated that the big hit will come around late Sunday night, early Monday morning.  Because of its huge size (bigger than Fabian) and its slow progress it will last longer and perhaps be more terrible than Fabian (and that’s saying something).

Currently they are predicting the closest point of approach at about 2 a.m. Monday morning (20^th September) (0600 hrs GMT) with sustained winds of up to 90 knots and potential guts  of 11 knots (which is 100 mph to 125 mph).  Imagine if you stuck your head out of the car as it was driving along say at 40 mph and how strong the wind is in your face and imagine that intensified by quite a bit and you will be able to imagine the impact it will have on our little island in the middle of the Atlantic.

Picture of Igor taken from space - it is rather huge!!

The office where I work and a lot of others I imagine are shutting early.  Not because the storms are expected today (Friday) but to give us time to prepare properly.  Hubby and I will be taking apart our shed and storing it away, all our garden furniture will be going into our Landlords garage (bless him).  We will also have to make plans for our plants, but given the huge population of miniature ants in our garden, I am afraid they will have to make do with being tucked away in a corner of the garden where hopefully they won’t sustain too much damage. 

I plan on taking some ‘before’ and ‘after’ photographs if there is significant damage to let you know just how we manage to play it out.

The below link is some footage of John Smiths Bay, I'm wondering how long that house is going to last during Igor, remember this video was taken yesterday (Friday) when it was a gorgeous day here in Bermuda with barely a drop of wind, imagine what it will be like post Igor.

http://bernews.com/2010/09/video-waves-crashing-at-john-smiths-bay/                                                                                






Update - Saturday pm


With the landlords help, we have taken the shed down in the garden and he has taken it away on the back of his truck along with all our garden furniture which is great and less to worry about.  I seriously believe that we have the best landlord in Bermuda (Thanks Michael Lopes - you're a real star!).  



I've taken my before photographs from all angles, especially over towards the sea and the trees that separate the sea from our house - it will be interesting to see how it looks post Igor.



We have Jim Cantore from the American Weather Channel here at the moment, and they're currently broadcasting live from Bermuda.  Shout out to Hilary who met him this morning and got a picture of him!  Courtesy of Hilary - here is his photo taken at Elbow Beach Hotel where he's based/reporting from

Justin (my husband) is currently in work at the moment, he is the IT Manager at his Company and is working there to shut down all the servers, and I believe, transferring all data to the Bahamas which is their disaster recovery alternative site, so anyone with investments with his Company will know that they are safe and sound!



This afternoon, once we have all the shutters firmly secured and the baths and all available pots and pans filled with water we are planning on going to a friends house for dinner.  I'm sure at that point we'll be getting stronger force winds but time will tell.  I'm just listening to the news at the moment and they are actually saying that Igor will be hurricane force over Bermuda for at least 8 - 12 hours! that's a mighty long time to be hunkered down in our house - fingers crossed we don't lose power for too long - no aircon, no water, no electricity, no TV!!! 


Anyway, gonna close off for now and will update more later as I have something to tell.