Hurricane Dean

Well as it appears and the news has been saying all day it looks like Jamaica and more importantly to me south Jamaica is going to take a line drive hit from this monsterous storm. It leaves me a little more than concerned as I have many freinds as well as others that were not so much freinds to me in the Treasure Beach/Calabash Bay area of Jamaica from my time as a resident of the island. I lived litteraly on the beach of the Carribean Sea there and went through a few minor in comparison storm systems like so in my time there. It looks based on the tracks forcasted that the eye and eyewall with either pass just due North of there or possibly right over or to the south and makeing an impact closer to Black River. The areas in question for this storm on this island from first hand experince will not fare well at all. The level of poverty around that area as well makes ever more horrifying to me. Lets keep the island in our prayers and that everyone fares well there. I have sent emails out to a few people in the area to see what type of preperation is going on and thus so far the Parrish I dwelled in (St. Elizabeth) has lost power on and off a few times and the clouds and wind are beginning to roll in here and there. St. Mary's has already lost power all together and a few Parrishes are winding down and voluntarily shutting the power off as a percaution. I am hopeing that it goes a little more North of forcast and gets up into the Blue Mountains. So far a former class mate of mine who lives in the Manderville area says that up at their elevation the winds have picked up a good bit and a curfew is in place. I am hopeing my former school and dorms have evacuated though already though knowing the way that school functions they will wait untill it is too late. Keep Jamaica in your prayers folks along with all other islands threatened by this truely nasty storm

yeah this is a pretty big storm. Houston is already taking measures to ensure if it does hit them with its current strength it won't be a repeat of New Orleans.

It is now looking like it could be a line drive on Calabash Bay/Treasure Beach. No word from freinds as I assume most are headded into the mountains. This should be an intresting night.

My friend who lives on Grand Cayman has evacuated the island (having just returned from her summer vacation last week) and says she expects significant damage to her house and car the way its tracking. After that I guess it's headed to the Cancun/Yucatan area...

The eye is passing well south of the Caymans so they should be relatively fine. Unfortunately it looks like the Yucatan south of Cancun is going to catch a direct hit from a category 5 storm...the forecast calls for strengthening to 140 knots/161 mph before making landfall. The area is still recovering from direct hits from Hurricanes Emily (135 mph) and Wilma (140 mph) in 2005 and when I visited Cancun and Playa Del Carmen a couple months ago, it doesn't seem that there's much beach left in most places. A storm this strong will certainly be bad news even if it hits 100 miles to the south.

I have a pair of freinds who were/are in Cancun last night trying to get out. I think they dropped a bucketload of cash to get out of there by 10 AM today local time. I hope they made it. On another note since the storm passed barely south of my former neck of the woods down there I have not heard from the people I still know down there. I am pretty confident they will be okay though.