You call that a hurricane?

Last week Hurricane Danny blew itself out before it reached Hispaniola, but this week I got another chance to experience a tropical storm as Erica approached. It got exciting when the Canadian government sent me an email warning. When I got to school, I learned that the public schools had never opened that day, the government having issued a school closure notice at 5 am. Oops. We opened. At nine, we sent our students home, and by ten, when the last of the chauffeurs had driven off with their precious cargo, teachers got to leave as well. The bus took us home, and we all hunkered down.

At 1, the power went off. Just as advertised, the inverter kicked in, and the apartment started running on the four car batteries in the laundry room. How long would they last, I wondered. Answer? At least nine hours because it came back on just as I was getting into bed.

However, the cause was a bit of a mystery. It was blowy, all right, and some rain fell, but nothing like what you imagine would be required to pull the plug on a city of 5 million. Year round, gets dark here around 6:30, so I got a chance to light some candles. (I didn't want to have more than one bulb on at any one time so as to conserve the aforementioned car batteries. One bulb, one fan, and the fridge.) Cooking was no problem because the stove is propane.

This was the storm at its stormiest. Palm trees are such drama queens.

The next day, I learned that the BC lower mainland had been hit by a storm that knocked the power out to 440,000 people, toppling trees that crushed cars and causing all kinds of havoc. And those people didn't even have to leave home!