nora was a bad house guest

Had I lived in Old Testament times as a prophet , I would now lie dead stoned in the street.
 
All of the scientific data informed us that when Hurricane Nora passed us on Saturday, our area would be brushed by its eastern edge -- or "the right side" -- as it headed north. Rainfall was predicted at 6 inches with moderately high winds. And that is what we thought we were going to get.

Well, we did. At least, we experienced the bare touch of the eastern edge of Nora. But the rest of the predictions were wrong.

Even though Barra de Navidad and Melaque share the same bay, the land on which they are built is quite different. Even in our normal summer thunderstorms, Barra is subject to high wind damage. Melaque is subject to flooding.

And that is exactly what happened in Nora. Barra is built on a sandy alluvial plain with the ocean on one side and a lagoon on the other. Think Kansas -- but with more views, and a lot more water. It is a target for high winds.

When the edges of Hurricane Patricia touched us in October 2015, it left behind a huge swath of wind damage in Barra. The town was cut off from the highway for a day because of downed trees. It took CFE (the electric company) two days to sort through the giant pick-up sticks game to restore power to most homes.

Last year, Tropical Storm Hernan, though it passed by far out to sea, pulled in other weather systems to dump record rains on the entire area. Because it is flat, the rains immediately ran off in Barra with only minor flooding. In Melaque, the opposite was true.

Melaque has two major flooding problems. In the west, a river was diverted into a canal that overflows into the surrounding low-lying neighbors. In the central portion of town and in Villa Obregon, floods occur in what I call "the dip." The area between the main highway through town and the beach is a former drainage area to a lagoon. It is lower than both the highway and the beach, so it acts as a run-off stream in high rains.

And that is what happened on Saturday. Nora's winds toppled tree after tree along the road to the highway taking down the electrical wires as it went. (In the past, CFE has turned off all power in the area when a storm sets in. I suspect that happened once again. With the number of lines down, there would not have been power either way.) And, just like Patricia, Nora stripped trees of their leaves scattering them throughout town blocking drainage grates.

The winds had barely stopped when CFE started clearing the downed trees on the road to the highway. Within an hour, access was restored. The crews then began working on restoring electricity to the town. By 11:00 PM on the day of the storm, my house had power. (I understand some people in Melaque did not have power until last night. La Manzanilla may still be without.)

But it was Melaque that suffered the most from the rain. Even in summer rains, downtown Melaque suffers flooding around the jardin. This was much worse. The flood waters could not drain fast enough and spread into blocks that normally not flood. Businesses, like Hawaii and the funeral home, were filled with water. And mud.

The mud is often the most damaging. It is thick and greasy. Filled with sewage. When it dries it is almost like plaster. It needs to be mucked out immediately. After Hurricane Jova, my landlady Christina set up an operation to launder clothes and bedding encased in that mud. Cleaning out the mud in West Melaque after Hernan was a major recovery problem.

People were busy Sunday morning in the dip mucking out their homes -- doing what my neighbors do so well: being resilient in the face of nature.

The dichotomy between flood and wind is not as distinct as I make it. There was also wind damage in Villa Obregon. The Costalegre Community Church sits in the dip. The street in front of the church has been destroyed twice in major storms. But it was repaved. And on Saturday, it withstood the flood waters channeled into the lagoon -- operating just as designed.

What the church palapa did not survive was the wind. It collapsed. Proving that the wind knows no town jurisdictions.

Why were the predictions so off? And off they were.

I suspect the people at NOAA would say that all weather is unpredictable at its micro level. But that does not answer why Hurricane Nora as category one hurricane seemed to cause as much wind damage as Hurricane Patricia as a category five plus hurricane.

Maybe it is because Patricia was coming ashore when it hit this area. I seem to recall an urban myth that hurricanes are strongest on their "right side." And that is what we experienced with Nora.

It turns out the "right side" warning is not an urban myth. According to those who know, a hurricane's right side (relative to the direction it is travelling) is the most dangerous part of the storm because of the additive effect of the hurricane wind speed and speed of the larger atmospheric flow (the steering winds).

Maybe that is the answer. All I know is that to be a good prophet, one often needs to rely on skills science cannot provide.

My friend Nicole Fournier summed it up well this morning in a Facebook post: "Power was restored at 11:09 last night. It's a beautiful sunny day. ... Todo bien!"

Having said that, there are people who have suffered flood and wind damage who will need assistance. And that is happening already.