Category Archives: weather

Blasted by Hurricane Beryl in Texas

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After 3 months away from home sailing across the Pacific Ocean on the Point Nemo, I came back to find class 1 “minimal” hurricane Beryl had done more damage to my property than all the other storms (Alicia, Harvey, etc) combined for the last 30 years.

Onboard the ship, I could only see news reports of Houston/Galveston and Surfside Beach. The photos and videos looked bad. Big trees downed and flooding all around Houston. Lots of flooding at Surfside and a few houses looked totally demolished. Surfside is only about 10 miles from Freeport where all of my rental properties are located. I used to live there and a lot of my friends still do.

I didn’t worry about it too much since I’d never been flooded before and I didn’t have many trees around my rental properties (though I did at my own house- which had trees fall through the roof twice since I’ve lived there).

I was more worried about the power being out again. Last time we had a storm knock the power out, mine was out for weeks. I came home to a horrible stink, tried my best to clear out the freezer without puking, threw out a couple thousand dollars worth of meat- but still couldn’t salvage the thing and had to buy a new one.

I lucked out this time. My own house made it through with minimal damage. Siding and gutters blown off and a few big limbs down in the yard (but thankfully not on my roof). I felt grateful. I walked around the block every day and it looked like at least a category 4 came through. There were trees down everywhere- BIG trees! People had stacked up huge piles of soaked sheetrock, carpet and ruined furniture along the side of the road. Only 2 houses down from me, a huge tree fell over from a neighbors yard onto their house. It must’ve been about 5 ft in diameter. One big old oak tree. I thought it was only sitting on the back part of the house, but a few days later there was a demolition crew there tearing down the entire house. Even the foundation is gone. All that’s left is their backyard shed. I hope their insurance paid.

My town, Lake Jackson, TX is a “tree city USA” and very proud of their beautiful trees. Beryl took out a lot of them. A friend of had one demolish their garage- took out a couple of their cool old cars. All over town the maintenance crews were out with backhoes and chainsaws for weeks. It was still going on when I left for work 6 weeks later.

I spent my entire time at home trying to deal with the damages to my rental properties. I felt so demoralized. Almost every single unit was damaged. I’ve spent so much time and money over the last few years working to get them in good shape to rent out. This was supposed to be my retirement. I finally had everything almost finished. Just one apartment needed a little bit more work- 2-3 days worth- and it would be ready to rent. Then we were going to paint a couple to make them look like new on the outside, I already had the paint and everything was ready to go.

Then came Beryl.

My manager didn’t want me freaking out while I was at work on the ship (and couldn’t do anything but worry) so she didn’t tell me everything about all the damage that had been done. When I got home, a lot of the major stuff had already been dealt with: 6 roof leaks, 27 blown out windows, 2 doors blown out, soffit and fascia blown off 1 building which caused the ceilings to collapse in the upstairs and downstairs apartments and also flooded the downstairs apartment. They told me the water was just pouring in, had a few inches of water on the floor!

My maintenance man had already fixed the roof, door and windows in one house and repaired the drywall and carpets that were ruined. He’d also fixed the roof leaks and drywall in another apartment, fixed most of the other blown out windows and doors, everything was fixed in the downstairs apartment.

When I got home, I think I pissed off my manager a bit since I insisted on getting the soffit/fascia repaired before anything else. We had more rain coming and without repairs, the rain would ruin all the work we just did in the downstairs apartment.

The woman who was “renting” that apartment (who had stopped paying rent before the storm came) was threatening my maintenance man every day to the point he didn’t want to work on that building anymore. She was also calling the city to complain about how I was such a “slumlord” every day. I had her apartment fixed only1-2 days after the storm, we had to prioritize. Lucky for her I wasn’t waiting on insurance like most people had to. Her actions slowed down our work quite a bit- for her and everyone else in that building.

Oh yeah, she also cut her ceiling back down after we fixed it so she could splice into the electric we were using to repair the upstairs apartment since she had stopped paying her electric bills and got cut off by the electric company. So she was blasting her AC 24/7 and threatening the maintenance man “don’t touch my electric” every time he tried to work on something in the maintenance room (she had cameras watching).

I also had another tenant who had a tree fall on her roof. I was told there was just minor damage, broke a window and some water got in that was causing mold to grow. She hadn’t been paying rent either, but my maintenance man had gone and fixed what he could for her a couple of times. She was moving out so when we went to take a look, we found the tree had done a lot more damage. Basically the entire back part of the house needs to be fixed and a window leak caused major damage in another room.

That’s the tree that fell on the roof, it basically destroyed that part of the house.

Another place I didn’t know was damaged except for a window and door turned out to have the entire ceiling come down in the kitchen and water damage practically everywhere.

SO. I’m back on the boat, waiting to hear back from the insurance agencies and my manager to hear what progress (if any) has been made. I knew rental property could be a hassle, but I really didn’t expect it to be this bad. I keep seeing stuff online about how landlords are just “evil”, out to just screw over the renters. Really? I don’t see it that way at all. I was a renter for decades and now I own rental property. I never felt that my landlords were screwing me, but I never rented a super top of the line place either. Maybe that would be different? My rents barely cover my expenses and so many tenants just screw me over- don’t pay rent, tear things up, etc. You really wouldn’t believe the conditions they leave. I wonder how in the hell anyone can live like that.

It’s pretty gross. I can tell you later. I have to get some sleep now…

B&W Challenge: Cold

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Here’s my entry for Cee’s B&W Photo Challenge: Hot or Cold Things. I was very lucky this year to go on a trip to Antarctica. I’ve been dreaming of a trip like this for decades. I had a fantastic cruise on the MS Roald Amundsen with Hurtigruten cruises. Here are a few photos. It was definitely COLD! 😉 

Lemaire Channel
Glacier at Orne Harbor
Vernadsky Station
Penguin colony- Cuverville Island, Antarctica

We were very lucky with the weather so far. It was very changeable, but most of the time so far was pretty nice. Sunny without much wind. This was our first real meeting with “authentic Antarctic weather” according to our captain.

The weather eventually got better and it was more enjoyable to hang around and watch these funny little guys. More on that later…

Weather Changes Our Plans

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After a beautiful day at Orne Harbor, we woke up to a more ‘typical’ day for Antarctica. So far, we’d been lucky finding nice weather most of the time. It changed quickly tho. We picked up our hearty campers, then headed on to our next planned stop at Neko Harbor (Andvord Bay).

Campers got to spend the night at Orne Harbor
we can just barely see the campers from the ship (far right in the photo)
The end of the red line is Orne Harbor. Around the corner to the South is Neko Harbor at the bottom of Andvord Bay. At the bottom left corner is Port Lockroy.

On arrival, we were met with high winds, rough seas, snow and very cold. There was a lot of ice in the water and it kept moving around. The zodiacs would have a hard time shuttling us back and forth to shore. After checking it out, the captain decided that the weather was not going to allow us to go ashore as planned.

too much ice for the zodiacs!

Expedition cruising, even more than normal cruising, is dependent on weather and other local conditions. You need to be flexible. It’s best to have the attitude of looking forward to whatever the day may bring and forget about being upset about what you might’ve missed.

We sailed on towards Damoy Point and Port Lockroy where we were scheduled to go ashore to the historic site run by the British. It has a museum and the only post office on the continent of Antarctica.

you can just barely see Port Lockroy middle left of the photo, we could just barely see their people waving with the binoculars
seals on the ice, taken from my cabin- I’m not sure if they’re weddel or crabeater seals

Sadly, the weather was still too bad for us to go ashore. I would’ve liked to send some postcards home with an Antarctica stamp. We did drive by and we all waved at each other. Brave people, to stand around outside in that kind of weather to wave at our ship.

On we went, to cruise through the Lemaire Channel. The weather was still pretty nasty for a little while. Howling winds, snow and cold! It felt like about 20 below, but I don’t think it was actually below 0 F. It was the wind that really made it feel cold.

The scenery was spectacular. We made our way through the channel filled with pancake ice, the sharp tips of the mountains peaking out of their coats of snow, glaciers calving off large chunks of ice into the passage alongside our ship.

The passage narrowed as the day went on. The wind died down, the snow stopped and the sun came out. I sat in the lounge with it’s wrap around floor to ceiling windows and just watched the world go by. Towards sunset (around 9 pm- it didn’t get dark until about 11), we passed through the narrows- only 1600 meters wide. The sound of the ice scraping along the hull of the ship was loud enough to be heard everywhere onboard.

In my room, I fell asleep to the low pitched background sound of the sea slushing along the side of the ship and occasional bang of a berg as we came out the South end of the Lemaire Channel to find our next adventure in the morning.

Passage to Antarctica: Will We Have the Drake Shake or the Drake Lake?

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Anticipation was high, people were concerned. We were crossing the Drake Passage- the area where the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans meet- between Cape Horn and the South Shetland Islands. It’s notorious for bad weather.

Winds and currents circle the entire globe, swells have thousands of miles of open ocean to build so they can grow to enormous heights. The Roaring Forties, Furious Fifties, and Screaming Sixties refer to these latitudes. Dozens of ships have been lost in the area. How would we fare onboard the MS Roald Amundsen?

Turns out we had nothing to worry about. We enjoyed crossing the Drake Lake. The winds were only about 20-25 knots and the seas 2-3 meters. It was lovely for this area and the season. I was actually hoping to see something of the famous nasty weather, but a few people were complaining of mal de mer so I guess we were lucky. I wouldn’t want to spend a couple of days with a shipload of seasick passengers.

view from my cabin

The ship’s crew had plenty of things prepared to keep us occupied for the time we would be at sea with no landings to look forward to. They always had interesting lectures and workshops for us to choose from. There was a nice stock of games and puzzles to play with. Or you could always choose to visit the sauna, the spa, the pool and jacuzzi, or chill out in a comfortable chair with a drink while watching the scenery pass by.

Some of the members of the expedition team were also scientists and encouraged us to participate in their studies. There was one that collected information about the clouds and weather, to compare with what was picked up by the satellites (observer.globe.gov). Another was gathering data on the birds we saw (www.ebird.org).

They had presentations in the ships science center where we could look through the microscopes (one was projected onto a large screen) to see the details of different kinds of ice, plants, krill, feathers, etc.

Krill

I enjoyed a couple of arts & crafts workshops. Watercolor painting one day and clay modeling another time.

My emperor penguin model

I joined a rotating group of ladies working on jigsaw puzzles in the Explorer lounge on the 10th deck where we always had a wonderful view out the starboard side. We had snacks and piano music there in the afternoons.

Our crossing was altogether uneventful. We had a couple of relaxing days to look forward to arriving in Antarctica and our first landing at Half Moon Island.

Michael Missed Us

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I was a little concerned about joining the ship last week. Hurricane Michael had just gone ashore while I was on the way to the heliport to fly out to work. I had been checking in with Marine Traffic on the internet to see where the ship was and how close it would be to the hurricane.

From what I saw when I checked Monday night after I got a call to go back to work, it looked like the hurricane would pass right over the top of the ship. I checked again Tuesday and it looked the same.

I find it hard to believe any ship would choose to sit still and let a hurricane pass right over the top of them but that was what it was telling me on the internet (and I knew they were supposed to be drilling a well).

So, I was wondering what I would be dealing with when I was flying out to work. It wasn’t until the pilots mentioned right before landing that the ship was underway, that I knew for sure that the ship had moved out of the way of the storm and was on the way back to her work location.

Turns out they ran about 100 miles to the West and only had about 50-60 mph winds and 20-25 foot seas. No worse than a bad Norther we usually get a few times every winter.

We’ve been back on location for a couple of days now and have just this morning moved back over the well head. We should be back on track in a couple of days. I’m hoping to be out here for another 2 weeks. I should know something for sure by tomorrow morning. 🙂

In the Wake of Hurricane Michael

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I’m interested to see what will happen in the morning. I (finally) got a call to go back to work on Monday. I flew out this afternoon after rushing around yesterday and this morning to get everything done I needed to do before leaving town. I’ve pretty much been on call for the last couple of years, so stay as ready as I can. Half way packed all the time, but  I can never seem to get the groceries right and always wind up having to throw out a bunch of good food. I hate that!

Right now I’m at the hotel in New Orleans, waiting for the crew change van which will pick us up at 0400. The alarm is set for 0300. We’re supposed to be at the heliport at 0500 to fly out to the rig at 0600.

I can never sleep the night before crew change. It doesn’t matter how tired I am. I try to get some sleep and just toss and turn until about 1/2 hour before I have to get up.  It doesn’t help that my usual bedtime when I’m home is midnight or later. It’s the same when I’m coming home from the ship. Can’t sleep until I get home and then I don’t want to do anything but sleep for 2-3 days!

I checked the location of the rig out of curiosity on Monday. While I was doing that, I checked the weather, just to see. Looks like the rig was pretty much directly in the path of hurricane Michael.

I’ve been checking up on both since then. Position of rig. Position of hurricane. Looks to me like the eye passed pretty damn close to the rig. I bet the DPOs had some pretty stressful watches for the last couple of days.

I’m really curious to hear how the ship rode it out. What kind of winds and seas were there on their location? What kind of footprint did they have? I’m assuming they were latched up since last time I was on there, they were going to start a new contract the first part of September. Normally, we don’t like to move more than a couple of meters. I’m wondering how much they moved around in the storm.

I was a little surprised they didn’t move out of the way of the storm’s predicted track. Then again, I think Michael came up fairly quickly. Might not have been enough time for them to shut everything down, unlatch from the well and move far enough away to make a difference. It looked to me like the worst of the storm passed a little to the East of them, good thing the storm followed along the expected track.

Michael has moved inland now, so weather offshore should be calming down. I drove up the beach to Galveston today (for a job fair at Texas A&M). Tide was very high and the waves were decent sized. All the surfers were out having a blast. That’s about the only time we get ‘decent’ surf- when there’s a hurricane in the Gulf.

I’ll be out for at least a week. Maybe longer (I hope so). I may or may not have enough internet access to blog, so if you don’t hear from me for a while that’s why.