Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Time for a typhoon

This morning, this e-mail was in my inbox, thanks to my boss.

Typhoon Sinlaku is currently located approximately 323 Nautical Miles southwest of Okinawa heading in a northerly direction.

If Typhoon Sinlaku continues on its current path its closest point to Kadena Air Base will now be 149 Nautical Miles west on Monday, 15 Sep at approximately 0700hrs local. At that time we can expect to be receiving winds of 90 KTS gusting up to 110 KTS at its center.

We are currently remain in TCCOR 3. Destructive winds of 50 knots or greater are possible within 48 hours. Initiate a general cleanup around home and office.

Additional updates to be provided as they become available.


Benny has been swapped this week at work preparing for it. He will probably be on call this weekend in case anything goes down. We already took down our AFN satellite dish (dispute my protesting) so we most likely won't see the big Ohio State-USC matchup on Sunday morning local time. Same goes for highlights from the game of the season: the Iowa-Iowa State game and its Cy-Hawk Trophy.

If you don't hear from us over the weekend, no worries. It just means we've lost electricity and are playing cards until the storms blows over. I'm hoping to get a ton of knitting and reading accomplished over the weekend. Bring on my first typhoon.

7 comments:

Sweet Cheeks said...

typhoons for you, hurricanes for us. its one of those things that make you not trust the weather man all over again, but we'll be thinking about you for sure! I'm always on that noaa site this time of year...

Meli said...

I'm excited for all the reading you will get done.

Tyler-Ashlee's Mommy said...

I emailed you last night, was all worried. News said a big earthquake hit there. Did it hit you? Said the typhoon was coming (or maybe already hit?)

Tammy said...

Is a nautical mile different than a regular mile? What's TCCOR and KTS - is that knots? What's a knot, compared to, say, mph? You're a journalist, Michelle, you know you're supposed to dumb it down for your readers ;)

Marina said...

Thanks Tam, I'm with you. I feel like with all of these nautical tattoos I should start brushing up on the lingo.

volksbloggin said...

Well I know that a 50 nautical knots is equal to 58 mph. TCCOR stands for tropical cyclone condition of readiness, I think. Something close to that. We are in TCCOR 4 starting May 1 and ending Nov. 1. Basically that means a typhoon can happen at anything. Once we moved into TCCOR 3, it means that we should move outside items indoors, because it is MORE likely that a storm can happen with strong winds and rain. We continue like this until TCCOR 1 -- that's when the storm hits and under U.S. government regulations we are not allowed to leave our homes. But the best fun fact I learned this week is that a typhoon is the same thing as a hurricane, it just rotates the opposite direction. So watching Spike Lee's documentary "When the Levees Broke," this weekend will have new meaning for us.

Drea said...

According to Jeremy the reason a nautical mile is a bit longer is because it is accounting for the curvature of the earth. In case you were wondering....