We have had typhoon warnings about three times since we've been here. We've prepared for them all because we have no idea what to expect. Thankfully, those all died or moved away from us at the last minute and we didn't get anything more than a little wind and rain.
Until Typhoon Trami.
Of course, Shawn left for the Philippines and then this threat emerged. We have a couple of really good Facebook pages that I was monitoring and they kept getting more and more ominous, so I decided I should probably prepare. The on base grocery stores were crazy (the locals didn't bat an eye). I got water, filled my gas tank, got out some extra Yen and cash, made sure we had some flashlights handy and charged up all of our devices.
These pictures were taken 2 days out from when Trami made landfall.
That purple sky was beautiful! I didn't enhance that photo at all.
The kids didn't have school the next day, one day before Trami hit, and we didn't want to stay in the house when we knew we'd be in for the next couple of days. We headed to our beach to check out the waves. It was pretty windy, but when we checked the windspeed on the internet it showed they were only gusting to around 40. We had no idea how much worse it was going to get.
Staged blowing away photos :o)
After checking out the wind and waves another time later that afternoon, we decided that it would be best if we stayed inside.
The next morning the winds picked up and the rain started. The locals were still out doing their normal daily activities. We watched the wind whip around our house from the upstairs windows. Our lights flickered a handful of times, so we knew the power would be going out soon. We colored, we drew pictures we read books, we watched movies, we played on our devices....and then the power went out. I had planned on it going out, so I turned the air conditioning way down. We were bundled up under blankets and hoodies. But, once the power went out, the cold house didn't last long. Probably not even an hour. Then it was hot and sticky and even a little hard to breathe. We couldn't open the windows because the other storm, so we had to just swelter in the heat. I kept walking around to make sure the windows weren't leaking anywhere. This house is built solid! There is no where for these people to evacuate to, so they have to build their homes and business to withstand major storms. Late in the afternoon, we were in the eye of the storm. I think the center of the storm was only 9 miles off our coast. It calmed completely. No wind, no rain, just quiet. The winds before were howling something fierce and I cannot imagine what that would be like in a stick build house back in the states. Around 4pm, it picked back up again. The highest registered wind gust was 105mph, but they think it could have been higher because they didn't get any readings after 7pm. There was no power and after watching Hotel Transylvania 3 (I bought it justifying the $18.99 purchase as a perk of the storm and that we would have paid that much to see it in the theatre), we decided to try to sleep. Amelia and I slept on the floor with lots of blankets under us. Caleb slept on the couch, but I made him move to the small one, away from the window, because I was afraid something would come flying through it. We woke up the next morning to still no power, but the storm had passed. We needed fresh air and decided to head out and check out the damage.
I loved this palm tree at the day care next door.
There was a piece of sheet metal flying around and we saw that both of our cars took a hit from it.
The little garden across the street took a pretty good hit (also where the sheet metal came from. They use them as fences here).
Lots of branches broken in the tree by our house.
We headed over to our beach and found that most of the trees where down. The storm surge must have been pretty high too, because of all of the seaweed and trash that was up on the grassy area.
This big tree once stood...
...here, where this big hole is.
We saw dead fish.
And lots of Facebook posts even showed lots of dead sea snakes that had washed up.
We saw one overturned car on the road, but there were actually lots of overturned cars across the island. We know people that lost their cars due to flooding and lots of people that their homes took on a lot of water (mostly on base housing, which they are renovating and why we are living off base).
That beautiful statue we took pictures of at the Botanical Gardens was blown over. (photo borrowed from the internet).
There was actually a lot of destruction, but nothing to where they couldn't go back to work the next day. We saw so many in the community out helping neighbors clean up. We even met a few people that are here on mission with YWAM (Youth With A Mission) out helping their Japanese neighbors. The kids wanted to help, so went back the next day and cleaned up the skate park for anyone that wanted to get out and play :-).
I didn't get any pictures from Kong-Rey, but everyone, even the locals, took this one seriously since it hit only 6 days after Trami. Everyone was worried about the debris that was still lying around now become flying objects. Thankfully, it died down and we only saw winds up around 75 miles per hour. Caleb even asked if this was the real storm, because it wasn't as bad as the other one. We never lost power either which made it that much better. They didn't have school on Thursday or Friday because of it and didn't have school on Monday or Tuesday because of Columbus Day. 6 Day weekend!
Hopefully we will not have to worry about anymore storms this season (it ends November 30th) or have to endure them without Shawn.
I'm not sure if this video will work, but at least you can see what the winds were like at 40 mph!
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