Saturday, July 16

Emily Update 5pm EDT / 4pm "Cayman Time"

Good afternoon folks....this is the metereological department of The Reef blogging :)

Emily is now officially the strongest July Hurricane on record, but it looks like it won't take Cayman into the record books.

As of 5pm EDT, the Closest Point of Approach (as per Gert's tool on StormCarib) will be about 94.7 miles.

As this is a very compact storm, even though it has very high winds at the center, Hurricane force winds extend 60 miles to the NE from that point, and 50 knot winds 90 miles.

Grand Cayman is therefore anticipating winds starting around 8-9 pm and running through the night, with a closet point of approach about 6-7am. Winds are anticipated to be up to about 50mph

After Ivan, nobody wants to underprepare, so the shutters we put up on the ground floor at The Reef have been left up for the duration, but we did not board up any more today. Of course The Reef is another 20 or so miles further from the eye of the storm, and on the side that should get the least impact from a storm of this duration, so storm impact should not be significant.

Unfortunately, the north part of the storm is showing a lot of rain bands, so Cayman will likely have a lot of rain and "grotty" weather (in Scots parlance) through at least early Sunday afternoon.

Here's hoping we don't have any downed power lines that would cut off power, but other than that we don't anticipate any potential problems from this one.

Sigh :)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is this the weekend that StormCarib Gert was to be at the Reef?

Take care.

Hope Bartender Linda has shutters on her place.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the update Tom! Sounds like things are going to be a little better than earlier predictions.......thank God! Celine

TomCayman said...

Well... at The Reef everything is set, restaurant doing a roaring trade and will remain open late, as we have staff staying on site, so they don't have to worry about the precautionary 11pm to 11am curfew.

I'm back at home in South Sound and just a little concerned about potential for wave action in this area (The Reef will be fine, but they are forecasting wave action for the South Coast).... keep your fingers crossed for me :)

The next 1hr 15mins to the 10pm advisory will take forever.... but hopefully it will show no significant change.

CUC is keeping the power up unless they get downed power lines, and we are hoping that the wind is not that strong.

Water Authority as a precaution has shut off the water at 8pm, but at The Reef they are fine, as we have a cistern....me, I've filled bath tubs and water containers :)

You know, if were not for Ivan last year, I don't think we would be taking this so, so seriously... but better safe than sorry !