Cheryl's house thankfully, is in several pieces - one extremely large one, and several smaller ones. She lost bars holding up her storm window coverings (which incidentally, have never been functional) but everything else seemed alright.

A LOT of mud.

Inside was different - there was a lot of mud that had been washed in from the rain. I suspected that she would get a fair amount of rain, because she warned me where it would come in if a storm hit, and I noticed a puddle in her bedroom before I left the previous day.

I was so disgusted with the mud that I didn't even take the time to take photographs - I just got to work. I found a mop and started with the bad parts - naturally, the mop head snapped from the stick. In seconds, I was on the floor mopping by hand through some pretty stinky mud. I had to move all of the furiture from one room to another to ensure I got all of the floor. The water had returned, and the pressure was good, so I filled bucket after bucket of water and washed with water. Clean water is such a blessing. There are so many places in the world where clean water is hard to find, some people have to walk far for it, and stand in line with a bucket. Not the case here. I was indeed blessed.           

Today I will use some cleaner in the water and wash everything once again. I am always concerned with sanitation, and want to maintain a clean environment.

More later.

[the purple dot in the center is the Island of Yap - map courtesy of Frank Sansone and the wonders of email]

I woke up today to find that last night's approaching tropical storm strengthened into a typhoon - officially named Typhoon NanMadol. I was curious why this name was chosen - NanMadol is an ancient ruin on the Island of Pohnpei some 900 miles away. If I were Pohpeian, I don't know if I would want the name of an important historical site connected with a potentially destructive storm. I asked someone, and found out that all four states of the Federated States of Micronesia: Pohnpei, Kosrae, Chuuk and Yap are all asked to donate names for typhoons at the beginning of each season. It was Pohnpei's turn for the name this time.  

I turned on the radio to discover that the Island of Yap was under Typhoon Advisory 1, meaning one had better secure their homes and loose objects now, and begin moving to higher ground if where you were wasn't safe. Schools were cancelled (I guess this would be somewhat equal to a 'snow day' in cold climes) and government workers were asked to come in only to secure their offices.

The day was gloomy, interspersed with extremely heavy rains followed by calm, steamy patches and bright overcast skies - these were the arms of the approaching storm hitting us. Estimates had the storm arriving at midnight - it was now 6 am, so I had 18 hours to prepare.

I'm living in someone else's house, a government-subsidied house which has been condemned for some time. Though it withstood super-tyhoon Sudal, with 150+mph winds in April, I was taking no chances that it would withstand this one, so I prepared as if I would come back to nothing. ) I called Cheryl on vacation in Australia to ask her what she absolutely wanted me to save. We had talked about this when I arrived, and I remembered 3 of the 4 things she wanted me to save: pictures, microwave, short-wave radio, and her boom box. Everything else, including her TV and DVD (both broken) could be trashed.

I spent the morning tearing down her house, packing things, and becoming more familiar with her stuff than I should have, since I only met her when I arrived. I put clothing into cinch-locked garbage bags. I put the short-wave and phone (she's lost two of them so far here due to weather-related problems) into the microwave, and put the microwave into the closet. I packed her pictures as best as I could.

I had hoped to do some linguistic work that day, but I couldn't concentrate. First Rule of thumb when living in Micronesia - preparing for approaching typhoons outranks all other activities.

However, I took a break later on to check out Cheryl's Archive office to see if her assistants needed any help. I was reminded of Halloween Eve flood that struck Hamilton Library and thought I could actually help archivists prepare for potential flooding. Ann and Regina were glad to see me, and gave me a task - find a hammer to pound plywood over the three windows in the office. We couldn't find a hammer anywhere in the archive, so I left, on a mission, having only an hour to find one before the assistants went home to secure their own homes.

The tool gods were with me. As soon as I went home and went into the spare bedroom, I saw the gleam of the nail-remover part of the hammer in a box. I grabbed it, went back to the archive. The three of us went out in a moderate rain, in our rubber slippers, to hang the boards up. We went in, chatted for a few minutes, and then left. That felt good.

By the way, I should mention that since my arrival on Yap, the bang-bang-bang of hammers is everywhere as citizens were replacing their roofs from Sudal and today, to hang plywood in front of windows for NanMadol's arrival.

I was told not to stay in Cheryl's house, as it had a good chance of blowing away. I had offers to stay in concrete houses, so I went over to hang out with Stephanie, the high school's science teacher, and Maria, the English manta-ray videographer and diver. Gilbert, the Headstart Coordinator for the Outer Islands gave me and my stuff a ride to Stephanie's across the lagoon. Gilbert's from the Philippines and has experienced a number of these storms.

I settled in, and we chatted - it was still too early for beers, so we logged on to the Web every half hour for satellite updates to track the storm. Stephanie was our Chief Scientist that day, and was bouncing between NOAA, the Typhoon Tracking Center, and the Navy's site. We downloaded some awesome pictures of these storms. They're a pain in the neck on earth, but they really are beautiful from space.

I called Frank in Hawaii, who was fully aware of the storm and was tracking it there on the Web. He estimated the storm's arrival at around 1800 instead of the 2100 and 0000 estimates I mentioned above.

I learned a lot about typhoons. Approach Speeds are always changing - the first speed when it was a depression was 8mph - as a tropical storm, 14mph, and as a typhoon, 21mph. This rather simple description doesn't necessarily mean as a storm grows it speeds up; however, the worst thing a storm can do as it approaches land is slow down. Sudal was so destructive because it slowed down as it hit Yap, and locals here tell me that the storm stalled over Yap for four hours at 150+mph winds which stripped everything bare.

NanMadol speeded up between 21 and 25 mph and hit us at 1800 for about one and half hours at full blast before moving on.

Of course, being the weather rat I am, I just LOVE storms. I had a tornado picture collection as a kid, caught hailstones in my shoes too many times to count, counted whenever I saw a flash of lightning to see how far away it was when the thunder struck, built numerous forts of snow on blizzard days with my brother Patrick, and played in a creek near my house in spring when the snowmelt caused it to swell.  

I called my friend Doug in Berkeley that day. He was pretty 'blown away' (smile) that I called, and he thought the whole thing was pretty exciting, and asked me if I was excited about it. To tell the truth, I was - people have weathered storms like this for millenia, and survived - I thought it would make a wonder trip story and it has - keep reading!

I went over to the apartments downslope (a 30 second walk) to visit the Peace Corps women - there are six of them currently assigned to Yap. I asked why there weren't any Peace Corps guys on Yap - they send them to Chuuk, because it's not safe for women there (another reason for me not to visit Chuuk). They were playing a fast game of Scruples, and passing around a huge container of peanut butter with a knife in it - aaaah youth. I remember when I could eat tons of that stuff and not gain a pound - now I only look at it and gain weight. When these six white chicks fired up the movie "White Chicks," I decided to go back to Stephanie and Maria's. I have a low tolerance for stupid movies.

Frank was spot on - at 1750 the storm went high and the show really began.

Maria got out her expensive underwater video camera she uses to tape mantas, Stephanie got out her reflex, and I my water-resistant digital. We stood outside her apartment and started snapping away. The wind was incredible - Maria put a microphone on it to get the sound. Being the copycat I can be at times, I snapped a few pictures, and then went inside to get my MiniDisc to record the typhoon and I got a good 6 minutes of sound which I will put online soon. Maria also has some good video and sound which I will also share when can.

No show is as awesome as the one nature can provide. We all stood transfixed as rain pelted the ground, bananas fell, palm and betelnut trees swayed, and the roar of the storm passed overhead. Every hair on my body was on end, and I felt the energy of the storm throughout every pore. It felt incredible.

Later on we were treated to a great lightning storm - we lost the lights, and later the water (Yap government told everyone they were going to shut it off at 2100, and they dutifully restored both in the middle of the night. We were tired, as we all spent most of the day preparing and waiting out the storm and crashed at about 2130. If the storm intensified once again as we passed through the eye, we all would have awakened again.

The next morning saw little damage in our neighborhood - bananas were down, but then again, bananas are not strong to begin with, and the way the storm knocked them down, all one has to do is dig a hole and put them in it and they'll be fine once again. Palm fronds littered the roads, but no roofs, or broken chairs, or other debris that was common with Sudal.

I walked my stuff home to the other side of Chamorro Bay (what some here call the "lagoon") and saw little damage other than downed palm fronds and bunches of coconuts here. By the way, no public works department trims the coconuts from the trees, and every tree has large bunches of them - Next to great reserves of fresh water, a sign of great abundance in Pacfic Island cultures.

Onward to Cheryl's house - what would I find?

Here is a picture of the beginning of the typhoon from Stephanie and Maria's front porch: