HURRICANE FLOSSIE - UPDATE

RADAR LOOP

Now a CAT-2 Hurricane

It may be just my imagination but it looks like the "eye" just did a bump to the north. 1626 hrs - 2007-08-14

Have to keep a watch to see if that is correct.



"Let's all be careful out there!"

HURRICANE FLOSSIE

WILL PASS BY TONIGHT
and Wednesday



All emergency preparations are "on-line". The County of Hawai'i government offices will not open for business today. The State Department of Education has closed all county public schools. The State of Hawai'i will close all their offices on the Big Island today.

Airline schedules have yet to be altered, pending any change in weather conditions. Most businesses on the island of Hawai'i will be closed. Long lines exist for gasoline and propane. Stores are running out of rice, water, flashlights and first-aid kits.

All the other counties are on "stand-by" since a northward shift of 1-degree in the storm's track would cause Flossie to impact the entire island chain.

Hilo side of the Big Island is anticipating winds in the 50mph range and surf in the 15-25 foot range. The hurricane force winds should not reach the islands as Flossie passes about 85 miles south of South Point on the Big Island, the most southern part of the United States. Currently the entire Island of Hawai'i is under a Tropical Storm Warning and a Hurricane Watch. No watches nor warnings for the other islands have been issued by the National Weather Service (NWS).

Currently Flossie has calmed a bit over cooler waters and now has sustained winds of 121mph with gusts to 150mph. That makes it a CAT-4 hurricane.



Two USAF 'Hurricane Hunter" WC-130 aircraft arrived in the islands yesterday and are flying into the storm every 6 hours to gather meteorological data.

To make matters worse for the Big Island, they had a 5.3 earthquake in the Kiluea region (where the volcano is erupting) that has caused some rock/land slides. My readers from California know that a 5.3 is just a "yawner" as far as earthquakes go. Wouldn't even disturb your morning latte in El Lay or Frisco. Different strokes for different folks.

Here are some links, if you are interested in following the storms progress today:

NWS - Flossie Products Page

NWS - radar for the State of Hawai'i

NWS - radar - South Point (Big Island). That large blue arc that you see is smoke/particulate matter from the Kiluea Volcano.

The Weather Underground page on Flossie. It has tracking maps, satellite images and more information than you'll ever need to know.

Glenn James' Hawaii Weather Today.

"Big Blue"



Should make for an interesting shift tonight.

***

Creative Time Wasting
and a lot of Scotch Brand tape

***

Everyone have a wonderful day and lets hook up tomorrow.

Mahalo

Aloha

---

THE PICTURE GALLERY

South Mau'i

Stormy Seas

Sugar Beach

Kihei Sunrise

Junction Of
Waipualani And Uluniu
Kihei

***

"Let's all be careful out there!"

POTPOURRI

DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN...?

• All the girls had ugly gym uniforms?
• It took five minutes for the TV warm up?
• Nearly everyone's Mom was at home when the kids got home from school?
• Nobody owned a purebred dog?
• When a quarter was a decent allowance?
• You'd reach into a muddy gutter for a penny?
• Your Mom wore nylons that came in two pieces?
• All your male teachers wore neckties and female teachers had their hair done every day and wore high heels?
• You got your windshield cleaned, oil checked, and gas pumped, without asking, all for free, every time?
• And you didn't pay for air? And, you got trading stamps to boot?
• Laundry detergent had free glasses, dishes or towels hidden inside the box?
• It was considered a great privilege to be taken out to dinner at a real restaurant with your parents?
• They threatened to keep kids back a grade if they failed. . . and they did!
• When a '57 Chevy was everyone's dream car...to cruise, peel out, lay rubber or watch "submarine races".
• People went steady?
• No one ever asked where the car keys were because they were always in the car, in the ignition, and the doors were never locked?
• Lying on your back in the grass with your friends and saying things like, "That cloud looks like a... ".
• Playing baseball with no adults to help kids with the rules of the game?
• Stuff from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals because no one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger?

And with all our progress, don't you just wish, just once, you could slip back in time and savor the slower pace, and share it with the children of today?

When being sent to the principal's office was nothing compared to the fate that awaited the student at home?

Basically we were in fear for our lives, but it wasn't because of drive-by shootings, drugs, gangs, etc.
Our parents and grandparents were a much bigger threat! But we survived because their love was greater than the threat.

How many of you can still remember:

• Nancy Drew
• The Hardy Boys
• Laurel and Hardy
• Howdy Doody and the Peanut Gallery,
• The Lone Ranger
• The Shadow Knows
• Nellie Bell
• Roy and Dale
• Trigger and Buttermilk.

As well as summers filled with bike rides, baseball games, Hula Hoops, bowling and visits to the pool, and eating Kool-Aid powder with sugar.

Didn't that feel good, just to go back and say, "Yeah, I remember that"?

Remember that the perfect age is somewhere between old enough to know better and too young to care.

How many of these do you remember?

• Candy cigarettes
• Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside
• Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles
• Coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes
• Blackjack, Clove and Teaberry chewing gum
• Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
• Newsreels before the movie
• P.F. Fliers
• Telephone numbers with a word prefix...(RAymond 4-6015).
• Party lines
• Peashooters
• Howdy Doody
• 45 RPM records
• Green Stamps
• Hi-Fi's
• Metal ice cube trays with levers
• Mimeograph paper
• Beanie and Cecil
• Roller-skate keys
• Corkpop guns
• Drive ins
• Studebakers
• Washtub wringers
• The Fuller Brush Man
• Reel-To-Reel tape recorders
• Tinkertoys
• Erector Sets
• The Fort Apache Play Set
• Lincoln Logs
• 15 cent McDonald hamburgers
• 5 cent packs of baseball cards - with that awful pink slab of bubble gum
• Penny candy
• 25 cent a gallon gasoline
• Jiffy Pop popcorn

Do you remember a time when...

• Decisions were made by going: "eeny-meeny-miney-moe"?
• Mistakes were corrected by simply exclaiming, "Do Over!"?
• "Race issue" meant arguing about who ran the fastest?
• Catching fireflies could happily occupy an entire evening?
• It wasn't odd to have two or three "Best Friends"?
• The worst thing you could catch from the opposite sex was "cooties"?
• Having a weapon in school meant being caught with a slingshot?
• A foot of snow was a dream come true?
• Saturday morning cartoons weren't 30-minute commercials for action figures?
• "Ollie-ollie-oxen-free" made perfect sense?
• Spinning around, getting dizzy, and falling down was cause for giggles?
• The worst embarrassment was being picked last for a team?
• War was a card game?
• Baseball cards in the spokes transformed any bike into a motorcycle?
• Taking drugs meant orange-flavored chewable aspirin?
• Water balloons were the ultimate weapon?

If you can remember most or all of these, then you have lived!!!!!!!

***

click for larger image

As hurricane Flossie draws closer it has really developed a punch. Sustained winds of 140mph and gusts to 175mph. The track has shifted slightly north and should now pass Mau'i about 250 miles to the south. It will begin passing over cooler waters today and should weaken a bit. Unless there is a drastic course change, we should just get some high waves and brisk winds. We might lose power, not an uncommon event in the islands. So if I go "off-line" in the middle of the week, you'll understand why and I'll be back as soon as the cable and power are restored. But that probably won't happen.

The "Worst Case Scenario" is if Flossie does what Iniki did 15 years ago, make a 90^o right hand turn and head due north. Every structure on Kaua'i was damaged in 1992 and it took almost 10 years to rebuild.

The last hurricane to hit Mau'i was in 1875.

Latest "Big Blue" image.

***
Maybe one of these will give you a laugh:








See y'all tomorrow!

Mahalo

Aloha

---

THE PICTURE GALLERY

Hawai'ian Sunrise

Expecting Surf Like This Soon

Windward Big Island

Windward O'ahu

***

"Let's all be careful out there!"

BEAUTY

AND THE BEACH

Image Courtesy Of:
MAUI ACTION PHOTOS
Mahalo, Van!

***

It was a night of action, adventure and excitement. For everyone, except me.
5 "10-13's" (no-load/no-show). Not my personal best worst but just one shy of that infamous figure. Other cabs getting dispatched to OGGs or long dinner runs. I kept getting pu-pus that never showed up. And while I was waiting for those "no-shows", the cabs behind me raked in the moola.

First run of the shift was a medium length dinner return from town to Wailea. A family from Moscow, Russia. $13.70 fare and he hands me a $100 bill at the destination. I tell him that I don't have enough cash to change it out. I didn't understand his mutterings in Russian but I am sure I was being royally cussed out as he and the missus searched her purse for the $15 I was eventually given. There has been a large contingency of Russians at the Kea Lani this week. I think I am the only driver that received any form of a tip from any of them.

Later in the evening I picked up a nice family out of El Lay from Safeway back to Wailea. They expressed an interest in living on Mau'i when they reached their sunset years. I told them that it is not as idyllic as it seems from a tourist POV. On any given day 100 people move here from the mainland. One year later maybe 1 of those is still on Mau'i. They can't adapt to the culture shock. We are the richest "third world" nation and the operative phrase is "THIRD WORLD". The way things run here is like nowhere else in America. I've harped on this before, as my regular readers are aware. Mau'i is not Lodi nor Springfield and is definitely not El Lay, "Shy Town" or NYC. Anyone thinking about living here should probably take an extended leave-of-absence before selling the ol' family estate. Come and rent a place for a year before casting your lot. This way you have something to fall back on when everything goes to hell-in-a-handbasket.

9 fares / 105 miles / 2nd quarter $100 bracket

***

Well, I made it through the week. I sure hope this Quasimodo hunchbacked stance I've developed starts fading over my days off.

I know, I know. Life's a bitch and then you die.

Two days off!

I plan to sleep through most of them. Alone, sadly.

I'll be back for Monday. Hope you will be too.

Sorry about the blurry image of the "hotrod" above. There was some sort of car show going on at Azeka-Mauka Shopping Center last night. I didn't have time to stop and snapped that image on-the-fly.

Mahalo

Aloha

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THE PICTURE GALLERY

Gated Home
Wailea

Wailea Beachwalk

Wailea Seascapes

***

98201



"Let's all be careful out there!"