Cyclone Garry was a Near Miss

We had another near miss with a cyclone this weekend. While the rest of the U.S. was celebrating MLK Day and the President's second inauguration, Cyclone Garry swept north of our island. The big concern was if the storm was going to turn south. The storm kept its easterly course and we never got more than a drizzle and some light breezes, despite warnings of 70mph winds and flooding. Next it looks like Cyclone Garry is off to the Cook Islands.

Holiday Evan

So Cyclone Evan went out with a whimper, at least here in American Samoa. Independent Samoa, didn't fair so well.

Cyclone Evan, after devastating Samoa, was aimed straight at American Samoa. However the storm stalled, and turned away from American Samoa, managing to wreck further havoc on Samoa.

We didn't know this was how it was going to shake out. So we boarded up our house and prepared to hunker down through the storm. Once reports of possible 130 mph winds started to come from NOAA, Sara insisted that our house wouldn't survive a hit like that and checked us into the Tradewinds Hotel. Under protest I went along with this and we packed up a few days worth of good and drink to head over to the hotel.

We ended up holing up with a Lord of the Rings marathon. We didn't notice much wind from the confines of the hotel room and couldn't get updates on the weather as the internet at the hotel was frustratingly unwilling to connect to our laptop. After waking up the next morning, we learned the storm had turned away and spared our island any real damage. With no reason to stay in the hotel, we had breakfast, used their gym for awhile and headed home.

After cleaning up our cyclone preparations, we were left with a Thursday off from work on a sunny day. We opted to hang out with our friends and celebrate a holiday in honor of Cyclone Evan, which is the best possible way the storm could have gone.

The only damage we received was that we didn't get The Hobbit into our movie theatre on Friday. As a stout Tolkien nerd, this was some serious damage. I had to wait until Wednesday to see it. I guess you can't win them all.

Waiting for Cyclone Evan

All government offices and schools were off at noon today. So I'm back at the house waiting for Cyclone Evan to roll in. 

We buttoned our house down as well as we could last night and this morning. Weather stripping across the doors, all our outside furniture moved in, our beer resupplied, the garden moved into a corner under the deck. We're as ready as we're going to be. Winds for the storm are supposed to ramp up high, but the worst of it is supposed to hit our neighbor Samoa. 

My plan's to watch a Lord of the Rings marathon until we lose power. Then it's reading by headlamp and playing board games. Sara would prefer to decamp and hole up in the Trade Winds Hotel for the next two days. We're waiting on the 3pm weather update to decide. We'll keep you posted if the internet stays up.

Cyclone Season

Living on a small island near the Equator can be lovely. It can also be hot and humid. When those two things combine with a low pressure system it can form a tropical cyclone. It looks like we have our first one bearing down on our little island. Based on early reports, it supposed to be a Category 1 (winds 39-63 mph), about on par with a Tropical Storm in the U.S. National Hurricane Center Scale. Not a devastating storm, and it also looks like it is only going to be a glancing blow to our island. But it adds up to more extreme weather than a mild California kid like me is used. Should make for a couple of interesting days.

Wet Season Doldrums

I want to say I've been remiss in updating the blog due to all the excitement and adventures we've been having. The reality is not that thrilling. The (fairly mild, according to the veteran members of our community) wet season has us firmly in its grasp. Days where we're not in the office are spent either beating the heat or hiding from the rain.

The wet season in American Samoa is the Southern Hemisphere tropical summer. Instead of the warm dry weather of California's Mediterranean-summers, we treated to maximum humidity all the time, searing sun and frequent heavy rains. Also, most tragic, we lost our trade winds from the south that would cool our side of the island. You wouldn't think a little sea breeze could make such a difference, but it makes a world of difference. Even during the dry season a little activity would work up quite a sweat. Doing the dishes or sawing through a piece of wood would leave you dripping, the difference now is that it's particularly difficult to cool off. In the dry season a little down time and some ice water would do the trick. These days you're sitting on the couch with your shirt off, with a fan pointed directly at you and slugging ice cubes and cold beverages and it still takes hours before you cease to soak thedorm furniture in salty water.

Sara and I still make an effort to get out and be active, but there is much more picking our spots. Instead of a hike and a snorkel every weekend, we're lucky to get a weather window to do either. Too many weekends have been spent on the couch watching movies to hide from the sun. Last week we had a cloudy and drizzly Sunday, so a group of us took another hike up Mount Alava. This was the best hiking I've done in months, mostly due to our avoiding the sun until the last little bit of the down hike.

Now that it's March, we're supposed to be on the up swing out the the wet season, but it can't happen soon enough in my mind. I'm ready for the heat to be slightly less and the breeze to stir our palm trees once more.

NOAA Station

Following a wonderful umu meal at our friend Visa's house and a short side trip to feed our "take away" breadfruit to some stream fish, Sara and I decided to explore the NOAA observatory and weather station out on the Eastern tip of the island. A few of our friends had visited the facility a few weeks before and reported back that it was worth the trip. It had been a few months since we'd been out to the east end of the island, so we thought it would be worth the trip. The drive out there is full of interesting sights and well worth it.

This is only the second time I've been out to the Eastern tip of the island. It's a beautiful drive out there and I love how once you get past the canneries in the harbor, the island quickly transitions to small quiet villages that are dotted along the lonely single lane road.

The NOAA weather station that sits out on the Eastern Tip of the island is one of the few permanent presences of the federal government here in American Samoa. It has the unique distinction of being the spot with the cleanest air in the world. Or at least the place that NOAA uses air samples from to determine what the "clean-air" baseline is. I find this a little odd, since the people of American Samoa burn their trash and waste on a daily basis and a healthy majority of the vehicles on island do not have any pollution controls, but I guess when the wind is blowing in the from east, the air there has come from a thousand miles of open ocean to reach there.

The turn off to the Observatory is unmarked, but it's pretty obvious which of the dirt tracks runs to the top of the hill at Cape Matalua, the NE tip of Tutuila. We followed the road up past a few homes and came to the gate of the NOAA facility. The plateau of the mountain was filled with the observatory proper and a number of instruments scattered around the grassy area. Sara and I spent some time trying to determine what each's purpose was.

Once we had explored all the sciency things at the Observatory we came across one last highlight, the stairway down to the cape. It is a long wooden staircase, containing over 200 stairs at a 45 degree slope down the mountainside. The thoughtful designers even placed several benches in to make sure there'd be places to rest.

The climb down wasn't bad, but knowing we'd have to go back up was a tickling in the back of our heads as we headed down.

The Cape at the base was beautiful. It's a peninsula that was bare rocks covered in moss and grass with the crashing Pacific on all sides.

We hung out for a bit and just appreciated the remoteness and ruggedness of our little island. Well worth the trip out.

All that was left was our hike back up. Thankfully we've been doing enough hiking that it wasn't too much of a challenge.

Thankfully, all that was left to cap off this Sunday was a stop at Tisa's on the way back to our side of the island.

Cold Day in the Tropics

It's been raining the past few weeks. It's understandable with the start of the wet season. The weather's now either raining and cloudy; or cloudless, windless and blazing hot. Today squarely falls into the category of rainy. We've already had several huge deluges where the clouds unleash an avalanche of water today. The conditions have been heavily overcast with near constant rain. As a result, it's relatively cold. How, relatively cold you may ask? 78 degrees Fahrenheit. After living in Tahoe and the Pacific Northwest for several winter, that's not a temperature that I would have ever considered labelling as cold. Probably just a sign that I've been living in the tropics for almost 6 months and my body temperature regulation has gone to shit. Better go get a hot chocolate to help me tough it out.

Tropical Rain

It's supposed to be the dry season right now in early June. That said, it still rains most every day here. Supposedly the cold air around the volcanic peaks pulls the moisture from the air. One of the peaks overlooking Pago Pago harbor is even called Rainmaker Mountain.

The rain here is unlike the temperate or mediterranean rain that has been predominate in the other places I've lived on the West Coast. Seasonal rains that start in November and continue until spring with rarely a rain outside of those times are the norm I've lived with up until now. The weather usually comes in as a part of large storm fronts carried east by the jet stream from out in the Pacific. These fronts will roll over the region and last from a few hours to a week, but they are predictable and are spotted by meteorologists well ahead of time.

Here in American Samoa, at least since I've been on island, the rain is a whole different beast. Admittedly, I don't have much access to the local media yet, so I can't say whether the weather predictors have much of a handle on how to forecast here. The best indicator for me thus far have been the wind. Right before every rain I've experienced, the wind starts to roar. The palm leaves rustle and shake. This is your warning sign to get inside.

Within 5 minutes the rain starts to move in. If you're outside you can see it sweeping towards you, usually from off the ocean. A wall of water soon passes over you and you;re surrounded by a downpour. It is an onslaught of small raindrops at a greater density than I have ever experienced. The wind almost immediately dies once the rain is upon you and you are left to find shelter or watch the avalanche of water from a window.

I'm also amazed how warm the rain is and how the temperature doesn't fluctuate during a storm. It's such a strong contrast to the rain I've experienced in California and Oregon, which is exclusively cold. I'm amazed that the times I've been caught outside in the rain here in a t-shirt and shorts, I wasn't the least bit bothered. Though it does take awhile for your clothes to dry out after the rain ends.

The rain thus far hasn't lasted longer 5 or 10 minutes at the most. Long enough to saturate the ground and leave rivulets of water draining away. Just as quickly as the rains begin, they die off and move on.

I'm sure my opinion of the rain here will quickly be revised once the wet season hits or a cyclone rolls through.