Tropical Storm Beta

[Tree Machine]

Here's one to keep an 'eye' on. http://www.goes.noaa.gov/HURRLOOPS/huirloop.html

 

[Tree Machine]

Well, that was a quick one. It went from zero to category 2 in just a couple days, then slammed into Nicaragua, and the mountains disspated the storm into nada. There was extensive flooding and landslides. it was really bad for the people as most don't have television and never knew it was coming.

I put a dozen hurricane images together, gave them a time of one second each and stringed them together from birth to it's end.

This is my final report on that hurricane.

 

[TREETX]

That is quite a Beta. I dare even say a master Beta.

 

[crtreedude]

Usually, in fact, almost always, we don't get hurricanes - but that one came a little close!

The homes down here are not built for high winds - as in anything about about 40 miles an hour. The roofs are just tin usually - there is no need for more because in the tropics, you don't get much in the way of wind.

The military moved in to warn people - but I rather doubt they got to everyone. The people of Nicarauga are very poor so this will be a major blow for them. Hard to recover when you don't have much to begin with.

 

[Tree Machine]

Hey Fred, haven't heard from you in awhile.

I know Costa Rica rarely gets a hurricane, but you got one back in 1998. I lived there in 1990 for a year. One of my favorite things I've ever done in my life was whitewater inner tubing out of the foothills of the mountains inland of Quepos.

When I met my wife in '92 I would share with her my adventures while living in Costa Rica. I definitely told her about whitewater inner tubing on the Rio Naranja where we'd put in at one of the most beautiful waterfalls I've ever seen in my life. I vowed to take her to this waterfall some day, and inner tube down this narrow river with her, more a fast stream with some insanely steep parts.

In 2000 I finally took her there, and true to my vow we went through an inordinant amount of effort to get tubes and get ourselves up to the base of the mountains where I could finally show her this amazing, idyllic place. After a few hours we got to the place where the taxi dropped us off and we had to hike a couple kilometers through the jungle. I was prepping her for what she was going to see, this beautiful waterfall that pours over this wall of solid granite, covered in ferns and moss and orchids.

We got there. It was gone. The stream that was 10 meters wide was a hundred meters across. The forested hillsides were raw dirt and stone. Uprooted trees were everywhere. I couldn't explain this to her. She could, though. She suggested I'd been roaming around the cow fields a bit too much.

We put our tubes in and floated down. It was a non-event. My narrow, fast, steep stream was wide, shallow, slow and there were downed trees and debris all down the banks. It was depressing and I had no idea what was going on.

We got back to town and I asked about the river. I kept hearing Meetch, Meetch. I learned of the hurricane. I assumed Costa Rica took a direct hit by the storm and it wasn't until very recently, surfing the NOAA website that I came across hurricane Mitch. It didn't strike Costa Rica, nor even Nicaragua to the north. It hit Honduras to the north of Nicaragua. It was a massive category 5, so large that it covered 5 countries in Central America at once. Costa Rica was on the far south edges of the storm. All in all, Mitch killed over 11,000 people and decimated Honduras and Nicraragua.

I didn't really get it until I read the reports. They're really very interesting. Here is the link to Hurricane Mitch.

 

[crtreedude]

Hurricane Wilma caused a lot of problems in that area this year - pretty much destroyed the road between Quepos and Dominical. Of course, that wasn't that much of a road to begin with... but it took out 23 bridges if I remember correctly and a couple of small towns.

What happens is this: When a hurricane comes into the North, sometimes it will stall the weather patterns here - and if you are near the coast, it means it sucks up water and dumps it into the hills. Let that go on for a week and you have serious problems.

What is also happening is this: As more and more trees are removed ABOVE that area, you get flash floods, etc. They used to be able to cut trees all the way up to the creeks and rivers, now they have to have a buffer of 15 meters if it is flat and 50 meters if it is steep on both sides. This will help some.

Yeah, I have been too busy recently, but we have been growing and we hired 3 new people so now I have my life back. We also changed just a little back in December - we are now going one generation plantation trees for 25 years and then to a perpetual managed rainforest. This has stirred a lot of interest - which is also why I have been so busy! We bought another finca / farm this year and believe it or not, we have a 20 foot boa constrictor wandering around on it. How would you like to meet THAT in a tree?!

 

[crtreedude]

Oh, I meant to say as well - if Mitch hit directly Quepos, it wouldn't be a hurricane, it would be a cyclone!