So far hurricane Katia has been a regal, major hurricane never touching land. It's been a joy to identify with her... until she arrived in Northern Ireland, Bill's European origin. Today, her center went over Malin Head, Ireland. Malin in french means pain in the ass oh. I admit there's a grain of subliminal truth in there somewhere, but however it happens it's purely from the subconscious... I think. Which brings us to tropical storm Maria. She hit the islands south of us as a tropical storm, degraded to a depression when she arrived here, and regenerated back to tropical storm status after she passed. This picture tells a thousand words.
The forecast was for her to hit us as a tropical storm, not a hurricane. That in itself is surprising for a peak of the season storm developed off Africa. Even more so when she effectively extinguished as she arrived. As Dr. Masters had warned, "Islands on the right side of the storm, such as Anguilla and Barbuda, will see the full force of the storm, with winds of 45 - 55 mph." St. Maarten is next to Anguilla, so we were supposed to get the full force of the storm. Besides fizzling out, she made a little jog to the right so that the worst side was no longer in our path.
When she passed near us as a fizzled blob, Dr. Masters described her shape as a squished question mark. In his words: "Tropical Storm Maria doesn't look much like a tropical storm--on the latest satellite imagery it looks like a squashed question mark instead of a spiral."
The next morning I isolated this still picture from an animation. She had puffed her question mark back up.
Again today, the question lingers; it looks as if it's even bigger! Our incredulity printed in a massive cloud pattern?
