(Part of the script)
"As a kid, I imagined what would be like to experience the full fury a major hurricane. But hurricane Georges blew it off the charts for me…
I’m José García, and this is my story of hurricane Georges in Puerto Rico, on September 21st, 1998…
Before hurricane Maria in 2017, 1998 hurricane Georges was the strongest storm I had experienced. To this date, and after chasing several hurricanes, it still is my 2nd most intense hurricane experience. I had turned 13 in July of that year, and was on 8th grade at middle school. My interest in hurricanes was already in full steam by that time, but Georges brought reality to what experiencing a direct hit of a major hurricane really was. Hugo in 1989 was my first hurricane, which was arguably still a category 4 with sustained winds of around 130 to 135mph when it hit eastern Puerto Rico. However, the eyewall missed my location by only 10 to 15 miles, which meant missing Hugo’s strongest winds at home in my hometown of Gurabo. Despite this, I got to experience a prolonged period of sustained hurricane intensity winds due to the storm’s mature wind field, likely peaking at around 90 mph and gusting well into the 100 mph range. Experiencing such a historic hit at only 4 years old, added to the fact that 33 years had passed since the last hurricane landfall in Puerto Rico, was quite a strike of fate for me, instilling the seed of interest in storms at a very young age. Now back to Georges…
Georges was a classical Cabo Verde hurricane. These are the Atlantic tropical cyclones that form from tropical waves that emerge off Africa near the Cabo Verde islands, and travel generally west toward the Caribbean. Georges became a tropical depression on September 15, tropical storm during the 16th, and a hurricane on the afternoon of September 17. The hurricane peaked in intensity during the afternoon of September 19. At that time, the storm was located 285 miles east of Guadeloupe, in the Leeward Islands, and about 600 miles from Puerto Rico.
.
.
.
After the battering of the western eyewall, it was time for me to experience the eye of a hurricane for the first time. Feeling the calm in the middle of a storm cannot be properly depicted by words or video. There’s an eeriness that tells you it isn’t over, yet. Winds really began to die down by 7 o’clock at night. The only significant sound outside was that of power generators around the neighborhood. Darkness was total, as power was out everywhere. There was a very brief break in the clouds in which I saw some dim star lights as I was carefully watching from the front windows. Some neighbors who were outside at that point saw them too. The calm period lasted around 30 to 45 minutes, with conditions beginning to deteriorate past 7:45. Then at around 8 pm the eastern eyewall showed up.
The 2nd half associated the onset of the eastern eyewall near 8 o’clock at night was “the real deal.” No doubt, it was much stronger than the western eyewall at our location. It also came back with surprising speed, the winds rapidly built up from near-calm to chaos within a couple of minutes. The ferocity of the winds, and the sounds of debris flying, branches breaking, and hell essentially breaking loose is something that cannot be accurately described. That’s when the expected becomes overwhelming, as all expectations are blown by the reality of it all. The nearby neighbor’s footage also showed frequent lightning in the height of the eyewall, which tends to occur in intensifying hurricanes in the deep tropics. Lightning flashes were also observed by Jim Leonard in Luquillo. Despite the extreme gusts prevalent under these conditions, which I estimate were in the order of 140 to 150 mph, the winds were much steadier than in the 1st half, likely near the 115 mph threshold based on the damage we experienced.
.
.
.
I took plenty of pictures of the damage in eastern Puerto Rico in the weeks following the hit. Locations ranged from my hometown of Gurabo, to the towns of Juncos and Las Piedras and the coastal city of Humacao, where the eye of Georges came onshore. I also surveyed damage in the coastal town of Naguabo, where my grandparents on my father’s side were from. The devastation along these areas was quite uniform, as the easterm eyewall propagated inland throughout the eastern part of the island.
.
.
.
On a personal level, Georges confirmed the passion that I feel for hurricanes. This started in 1989 when I was only 4 and hurricane Hugo hit. The active 1995 hurricane season got me into permanent hurricane tracking at 10 years old; with the major threat of hurricane Luis, and devastating hit of hurricane Marylin to Culebra, Puerto Rico. Georges was until recently the strongest storm that I had personally seen, and is still one of the great weather events of my life."
Jim Leonard's hurricane Georges footage: • Hurricane Georges - Lu...
Негізгі бет My Story of: HURRICANE GEORGES in PUERTO RICO | 1998 (Mini Documentary)
Пікірлер: 42