Just a little worried

I'll probably be blogging more often for the next few days because of Hurricane Dean. Hopefully I can keep family and friends (and a few devoted readers!) advised as to our safety and plans.

Right now Dean looks bigger than Wilma ever did on radar and he is still at least 3 days away from us. I just read that he has been upgraded to a Cat 3. The projected path has moved significantly north showing the eye passing directly over Cancun (us!!) at 8am Tuesday morning. Even if it continues to shift, there is no way we are going to miss getting the deluge of rain and high winds. I just hope the surge is not too big.

We are elevation 27 feet and about 50 yards from the shore line. Not much leeway there! During Ivan, which we stayed put for, we had 25 foot waves coming in at us. There is a small reef just offshore and it causes the waves to break so we just get the surge, not the power of the breaking wave.

We are staying put. No matter what. We left for Wilma and it took almost 3 days to get back home due to flooding of roads and no ferries. Our house is very strong and I'm confident it will withstand another onslaught. Still, it will be very scary while it is happening.

We are guaranteed at least 2-3 days of no electricity. The municipality shuts off the power about 24 hours before the storm is due to hit to avoid any live wires coming down. They will turn it back on once the storm is safely past. If there are any electric poles still standing that is! Wilma knocked down every utility pole on the island, as well as most of those in Cancun. It took 2 weeks to restore power, which I found amazing.

hotel workers already starting to remove beds from the beach

I drove around this morning and tried to take "before" pictures of everything/everywhere that I think is going to get hit hard. We'll see.