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For days, I’ve been wanting to write something about the documentary ‘Shake Hands With The Devil’, a Canadian production about Dallaire’s return to Rwanda, 10 years after the genocide. I simply can’t find the words. The documentary is good: I was surprised about how Dallaire literally spills his gall about the Belgians, and frankly, I don’t blame him.

Closer to home: today I could not find the Dutch word for ‘hurricane’. For some kind of reason the word was gone from my vocabulary: probably this has to do with the fact I’m seeing and hearing about hurricanes over and over. There are no hurricanes in Europe. Stormsurges, yes. Hurricanes no. Alfons reminded me (the other day) of the early Dutch Nineties storm [I can’t remember exactly the year], which was pretty scary too. At that time I was still a student taking the train forth and back from school to home. I can only remember that trains weren’t running and that plenty people got stuck on railway stations. I managed to get home one way or another in a train that was so laden full of people that people tried to get into to train via the windows.

No really. That was a joke.

Yesterday, I guided a spider to safety in case extreme weather conditions from the storm called Ophelia were going to hit the province. Since a couple of weeks, this particular spider has decided to make a habitat in front of the entrance to our backyard deck, forcing our sacred 15-year old puppy dog to take the regular entrance into the house instead of the easy backdoor way back in.

After carefully destroying her (his?) web yesterday, I was suprised to see the spider back in full force with a brand new web at the very same location with some kind of catch. Looks like a fly from here, and a big one at that. The poor thing must have been spinning its web during the rain (which stopped on or around 4-5 am) in the wee morning hours, probably trying to be ahead of suppertime, which in spiderterms equates to ‘the break after the rainfall, when all these flies head out for the green container’¹ (I hear). Smart thinking. Not so smart thinking (from a human perspective), to spin the web at the same spot. But hey, it’s my pleasure to let us species co-exist for a while: the spider’s determination serves as an example for us lowly humans.

There’s your post-Ophelia picture of a genuine storm survivor.

Our humble digicam supports both zoom and macro mode (up to 15 cms I think): I used a tripod which got me as close as +10-20 cms to the web and managed to get 4-5 pictures with 3x optical zoom (max 23.1 mm). Note that the wind was blowing too, actually towards the lens of the camera. The ones above, were some of the lucky shots.

¹ For some kind of reason it tends to attract plenty of flies.

While the wind is still blowing (and rain still falling) outside, I decided to see what happens after a hurricane blows into the Atlantic. Discussions with Alfons end up with a consensus that these hurricanes end up as depressions in the Atlantic to pound Britain and other European countries, but where do the European weather agencies pick up? Well, apparently these hurricanes end up on the desk of the European Centre for Medium-Weather forecasts.

Hold on you say, don’t they use satellites too? Yes, remember MeteoSat: over there you can find the latest and recent photographes of Earth taken by four geostationary satellites.Stitching two pictures together and I ended up with this amazing (warm) feeling about how geostationary satellites have made life so easy for us. With all those satellites around Earth, literally observing every moment that passes by, it amazes me how people dare to say that we lack real facts about Global Warming. Think of it again, how much data is being spit out by computers processing these satellites’ data.

This is pure science and seeing the distance between Nova Scotia and Europe, it’s amazing what mankind has achieved by just launching ‘stationary’ satellites into space.

update: image added from Ophelia pre-NS troubles. 286 Kb

Watching the news at 6:00 PM, there was good news: according to the Dartmouth Hurricane center, Ophelia was breaking up because of the colder water. Yay, cold water rocks. Additionally, it looks like Ophelia track has changed a bit east ward. It’s not over yet, says the Hurricane center, ‘but it looks better than the forecast. There will be still winds and plenty of rain‘.

Earlier, CTV had a reporter on one of the NOAA planes inspecting Ophelia’s eye. At 5pm NOAA issued an updated weather warning:

A TROPICAL STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FOR ALL OF NOVA SCOTIA EXCEPT FOR CUMBERLAND AND COLCHESTER COUNTIES. A TROPICAL STORM WARNING MEANS THAT TROPICAL STORM CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED IN THE WARNING AREA IN THE NEXT 24 HOURS.

A TROPICAL STORM WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FOR CUMBERLAND AND COLCHESTER COUNTIES OF NOVA SCOTIA…AND FOR PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND.

Right: We need Instapundit and Dailykos to check into this!

Newsflash!: Your reporter at xsamplex received the following message from Ophelia:
EU ROP E HE RE I C OM E!

Thinking of the rainfall (the wind hasn’t picked up yet): remember those rainy scenes during the endfight in ‘The Matrix: Revolutions’? Those were shot in a studio.

I also watched The Weather Channel and noticed discrepancies between what they predict compared to what Environment Canada says. EC’s Ophelia track is skimming the Atlantic coast, The Weather Channel has alerts for towns inland, including Truro ‘which may see floodings’ on lower situated land. That be Park Street and environs and probably portions of Bible Hill at the other end of Main street. The WC had a projected track of Ophelia hitting land just south of NS then moving northward, straight over Truro (expected time of arrival between 0-2 AM).

I presume that EC’s data is out of date.

While going around the property to pick up loose stuff (shovels, brooms and that), I noticed the huge spiderweb in front of the steps in the backyard. A tiny spider, so I carefully broke the web, gently guided the spider back to the railing and ground, where it may be safer than hanging around in the wind and rain. I left the other spider where it was: the one that made (another huge) web diagonally across the deck. I mean, I cannot save every silly spider. They should learn not to pretend they own the world.

Update: it be nice if Environment Canada had some form of XML feed.

Interesting: it looks like Ophelia is going faster than I expected. However, Ophelia is only supposed to hit land at midnight UTC, which makes it 8:00 PM over here (according to track data): it’s going to be a long Sunday. Picture next is from 12:15 UTC (which makes it 8:15 am Local Time). That’s more than 2 hours ago and is ‘the most recent’ image from Ophelia.

I have to check around the property and make sure things that aren’t supposed to be flying around won’t fly around.

OK then: it looks like Ophelia actually is going to bring more problems over here than previously anticipated. That is, the media and national weather centres, being (probably) overexposed to Katrina coverage, upgraded the weather conditions for tropical storm Ophelia. It apparently did pummel the Carolina coast but nobody is actually sure what to expect over here.

Since Ophelia isn’t graded as a hurricane, I ‘only’ expect Gustav-like rainfall and winds, which will come with intermittent power outages. Hopefully not of the ‘long-term’-kind.

Interesting to see the ambivalent approach by the authorities: since Ophelia is officially classified as a tropical storm, they urged people last night to be prepared for the worst, which led many people to go out and stock up. To the panicking people of Truro: you bought up all the Campbell’s noodles I usually need for work. I hate you, now. Also, to the person who bought up fresh meat: if you lose power, you will regret having any meat in the house.

Point of interest: as usual, Weather office’s excellent hurricane track pages.