Jimena leaves destruction in her path

Jimena was nice enough to bypass us with her wind and fury but she picked up more water on her way north and has inundated a path through Baja from San Carlos to Santa Rosalia and beyond. Check "The Baja Pony Express" site for stories and photos.

Hurricane Jimena again

I received an email today claiming that Jimena has done terrific damage from landfall to Santa Rosalia. One report stated that the Mulege river crested over the bridge. If that's true then those folks are suffering. If any of you have contacts or web links, please let me know.

Bob

We're still safe.......

So far, so good. Jimena is still tracking N by NW and looks like landfall will be on a sparsely populated area near Constitucion. There's a nice little town named "San Carlos" nearby where we go clam digging. If Lady Jimena continues her present course, the residents of San Carlos will be hit hard. Here in Los Barriles, we will no doubt have a LOT of rain but the wind velocity will be considerably lower than near the eye.

We came to the restaurant this morning. (In case you're not a regular reader, my wife Donna opened a diner-style restaurant 3 years ago in Los Barriles.) We only had 2 employees show this morning but Donna and I and our nuera (quick, to the bablefish Batman)are here prepping food as well as possible. It's amateur hour at the Roadrunner Cafe!!!! Outside it's raining steadily; sometimes more, sometimes less.

Jimena has become news.

Well She's still coming. Her horizontal speed has slowed to 8 mph from 12 and she's still out there huffing and puffing.The first picture to your right is from the NOAA site. The good thing is that the trajectory has been consistent for a couple of days. When hurricane John hit, the predictions were all over the map from the different agencies. He was headed directly for San Jose del Cabo but at the last minute, took a right turn, went out into the Sea of Cortez, then took a left turn and landed almost on top of us in the Buena Vista area. John was reported as a class 3 I believe but the local wind station broke at about 170mph. It was NASTY. Broke 6 glass sliders in our house and a few windows. Thank God there wasn't much rain: mostly wind. Some storms don't have much wind but dump rain at an inch an hour. You have to witness that much rain for 24 hours to believe it.
The second picture is more of a "visible" look at the storm. Looks bad huh? But since I'm not a weather person, IT LOOKS WORSE!!!! AAAAHHH!!!!! Just kidding. I'm not scared. Much.
One more screenshot. This shows the area that will be affected by the storm. We are located on the right edge of the Baja. (click on the photo, then click the "return" arrow) We should only get some rain and not much wind. We'll see, no?
By the way, I always check a site called "eebmike.com". He or she (I actually don't have a clue who this wonderful person is) has combined data from several sources and the site is the place we Bajonians go for the latest scoop.

Hurricane Alert!!

It's that dreaded time of year again. No tourists season. Everything s l o w s d o w n and you wonder if you're ever going to have another customer in your life. It's hot and humid and the A/C is maxed out and your employees are maxed out and you're thinking about your business and you think, "What was I thinking? This isn't any fun!!" A lot of businesses just say "heck with it" and close for the month of August or September.

But then it gets interesting. A hurricane happens!! Hooray!! It forms up South of the Baja Peninsula and starts coming North. Actually nobody says "Hooray" except our friends who have never actually lived through one. But the point is that a hurricane certainly breaks up the monotony.

So right now we have a fairly strong hurricane bearing down on us. Her (I think) name is "Jimena." That is pronounced "He may nah" more or less using English. (Sorry if I sound like some mean teacher talking to bad students but some people just don't know how to pronounce words written in Spanish)

According to the prognosticators, Señorita Jimena will show us her fury sometime Tuesday. So we're busy making sure the generator works, checking for loose stuff outside, moving things away from the windows and fun stuff like that. You don't want things lying around that can blow through a window.

I've had the dubious pleasure of being here for every hurricane since Isis in 1998. I think 1998; my memory really wants to block out the first one. We were house and baby sitting for some friends who had gone to San Francisco for their anniversary. They were only gone one day when the hurricane decided to show and it was on top of us very quickly. So we were in this Fabulous house over-looking the Sea of Cortez with our 2 boys, 6 and 12 and their 4 kids, 5 through 14. The kids made their own plan, covered the whole floor of a large walk-in closet with pillows, took in a tv and vcr, every soft drink in the house and every bit of "portable" food. So while we were bailing water, saving expensive artwork, squeezing out towels and generally panicking about these peoples' nice house, the kids thought we were having a noisy picnic. In the end there was no permanent damage to our friends' beautiful house.

So here we go, a day or 2 of speuclation and watching the internet updates. See you on the other side.