Yesterday friends of ours who are over in Puerto Rico texted us asking about how the weather was here in St Croix...
We answered back that it was a little gusty but OK. We had been keeping an eye on the tropical wave (invest 90L) but it looked a bit ragged and non-problematic.
The weather picture looked something like this...
Our friends then texted back that they had just been to the local burger joint and learned that they were about to get hit by a tropical depression very soon named "Dora" and hoped that we would be safe... Big storm come!
As it happens, I'd been following tropical storm "Dora" as well...
"Dora" looks something like this...
It seems rather obvious, but "Dora" being in the Pacific Ocean, was not exactly a threat to us here in the Caribbean... Just about any village idiot could see that but apparently the local "weather guru" in Puerto Rico could not.
A few years ago when we were hanging out in Sint Maarten the local "weather guru" who did the morning VHF net came on one day and told us we were in danger of a class 3 or greater Hurricane later that day... Having just looked at NOAA a few minutes before I knew there were no hurricanes in the Caribbean basin but had noticed that there was one hell of a storm near Hawaii that had folks quite nervous. Could there possibly be a connection?
As it happens, the prawn-like "weather guru" in question was getting his weather info from SailFlow or WindGuru (I'm not a big fan of either) and had been mistakenly getting the weather reports for Hawaii and not Sint Maarten. This actually explained a lot, as for the last couple of weeks his weather reports had been 100% wrong (really quite an accomplishment in an area known for it's same old same weather).
Sadly, I have a lot of stories of this ilk of so called experts on weather getting things seriously wrong on so many levels that I'd much prefer to trust my weather to the village idiot, drunk, or someone who divines weather by looking at goat entrails rather than someone who tells me he is something of a "weather guru". I should also point out that I don't get my weather from TV weather personalities, local newspapers or local government ...
Luckily I don't have to, as NOAA is there to give me the basic weather picture that I need to keep "So It Goes" and crew safe.
Listening to Tom Fogerty
So it goes...
