TS Eta arrives quicker and closer
(CNS) UPDATED 10am: Tropical storm Eta was travelling at around 17mph, with winds of more than 40mph, as it headed towards Cayman Saturday morning more quickly than expected. At 10am the storm was located some 45miles WNW of Grand Cayman. Eta, was expected to get even closer to Cayman during the course of the morning with winds in excess of 40mph already recorded here. A tropical storm warning remains in effect and people are urged to stay indoors for their own safety.
Cayman can expect even more torrential rain and tropical storm force winds early this afternoon until early Sunday morning. Tropical-storm-force winds now extend outward up to 60 miles from the center.
The forecast is calling for a decrease in cloudiness, winds and seas from Sunday morning.
All stores, including supermarkets and business were largely closed across the islands from 9am Saturday and the Red Cross shelter opened at 9am, while the opening of shelters at John Gray Memorial Church, West Bay; East End, Breakers and North Side Civic Centres was brought forward to 10am.
CUC also began reporting clusters of outages around the island which can be viewed here as several poles were pulled down as a result of the winds and heavy rain in particular around Red Bay and Savannah. Crews were on location and are working to restore power when and where it is safe to do so.
Phone lines were also down at the hospital and the HSA issued a temporary number, 525 2144.
For the latest weather updates, visit www.weather.gov.ky
For tips to prepare for severe weather, visit www.caymanprepared.ky
For the latest government news and updates, visit www.gov.ky/all-news
For all government office closures and other bulletin board notices, visit www.gov.ky/news/noticeboard
Category: Local News
This storm was a good reminder of the the need to constantly monitor weather reporting because it changes with each update, and to ‘read the fine print’. What Cayman experienced was in the ‘cone’ of predictions. The outside edge of it, perhaps, but still within predictions. The challenge is that it is hard to give all of the details, especially over limited medium like radio (or television) so people tend to focus on the ‘headline’ ‘best estimate’ prediction (right up the centre of the cone, most likely wind strength and arrival time) and not get (or prepare for) the 25% chance its earlier and stronger. (Or then get annoyed when its later and milder.)
I admit I got caught out when the winds arrived at ‘earliest’ and not ‘most likely’. Fortunately my preparations & life are simple so I could shrug off a lost Sat. morning. I feel sorry for those people who got caught out at the grocery stores (on both sides of the cash register), etc., thinking they had a few ‘spare’ hours on Saturday morning before really needing to hunker down.
PS> For those persons now looking for the ‘fine print’, please ask around. The US NHC are good (cones of probability of various wind strengths at various times). There are also less official sites that ‘underground weather nerds’ will frequent. (And in hurricane season doesn’t that apply to all of us?) And the CI NWS radar feed gave a good view of when the weather turned ‘all clear’ on Sat. afternoon (on GC).
Stay Dry
Can’t monitor it while you’re asleep unfortunately.
Perfectly said. NO wx organisation can be 100% accurate when dealing with probabilities and multiple variables. In this case, Eta seems almost sentient, as it pushes against the dry air, seeking a weakness in the front; it might do a loop again looking for the way northward.
It has always and will always be so; we can use the weather forecasts as tools, but we shouldn’t ever act as those those guesses are cast in stone.
I swear, some people seem to think that they should be able to look overhead and see the spaghetti lines in the sky. It’s a guess. An educated guess. Be prepared, that is your duty.
Lots of comments here about CUC poles being weak and too much prep for just a Tropical Storm.
However, there are anecdotal reports of what may have been a tornado that tore through Savannah/Newlands area, possibly further towards Red Bay, causing a lot more damage than the 50mph winds that were expected would have.
Just goes to show, better to be over-prepared than the opposite. CUC did an excellent job working in that weather to get the power back on so quickly!
Why. Muust we read the cayman newsin facebook? Cant we get our news back for gods sake its 2021 soon
Very true, for those that haven’t connected the dots, CIGtv was created to replace CITN because leadership personalities had grown tired of being “called out”.
When CITN was first majorly in trouble of closing in 2012, what was established? Who trained the majority of this newly established station? Which one was being funded while the other was left out in the dark to fend for itself like a scorned child? What did government do when one was forced to close?
This was a plan coordinated long time ago, and they wanted to pretend it just fell out of the sky.
Couldn’t see it in 2017, but everybody better see it in 2021, and vote accordingly. Only proved these politicians want mouth pieces they can control and sling poli-tricks any chance they can get.
Go back to sleep Mr. George. These are issues that need discussing, because this tropical storm caused real and measurable problems. Instead of being bored, you might contribute possible solutions.
The Government needs to take a long hard look at the resilience of the island. When the infrastructure of an island is taken out by a Tropical Storm there is serious problems. The service providers have been able to monopolize the utilities sector with no oversight to ensure resilience. These providers should have learnt from hurricane Ivan and should have ensured that risk to infrastructure from flooding and wind were mitigated.Surely there should be requirement to upgrade and maintain the infrastructure to ensure it can cope with the adverse weather conditions we face every year.
CINWS 40 mph = Real World 60 mph!
What a load of crap
For a moment there I thought the borders had opened and Kx107 was open too for the week shopping trip to Miami . “ Travel Sector Estimated Time of Arrival quicker and closer…”
😅
Going to take more than a regiment if we get a hurricane..This government better wake up and see that our infrastructure and roads systems are falling apart.
The government allowed the Water Authority to dig up North Sound road in the height of the rainy season and for weeks it has not been repaired causing people to damage their cars in the large pot holes.
Many neighborhoods that have flooded for years like Windsor Park and Randyke Gardens remain flooded while the representatives for those areas live in their nice expensive homes far removed from their people’s suffering. Now they will come out and patch a road here and there to pacify the people until the next election instead of getting them fixed properly.
The homes and their occupants need to be moved. They are built too low. Planning here is a joke. Nothing should be allowed to be built that would flood in a minor tropical storm.
We are a community in the Scholars Drive area in West Bay. For three years a group of us have relentlessly reached out to our representative, and it took almost one year for him to respond. After meeting with a smaller number of us as we discussed various issues in our community, drains were installed but up road versus down road where the water flows….never heard of water travelling upwards. So representatives are not doing anything! We had about 3 feet of water in some areas, everyone knows that the place was flooded all across the islands, and he is yet to come see what is going on in his constituency or if anyone needs help.
As CUC says “You’ve got the Power” – sometimes, that is.
why is the national weather service website absolute garbage????
its useless and should be got rid of.
local weather forcast proved wrong again…but somewhat understandable as this was a large undefined system with no real center.
didn’t like they way forcasters tried to make for the fact by saying the worst was yet to come between 2-pm…only to proved wrong again.
Why was there no update on the website between 8am and 4pm?
Mind you, these were the times updates were supposed to be published, not when they they actually were.
Exactly!
Let’s see where funding for the fix up of all of this is going to come from.
And today’s widespread flooding, outages of power, water and FLOW after a tropical storm should force us to ask…how is such weak infrastructure going to support all these new developments??? Or 100,000 people?
Agreed.. it’s been exactly 16 years since Ivan and the recovery that followed, but all that now is showing its age. Just look at the absolutely destroyed roads we have to drive on ?
But you know, that is what the Mercs and Porsche SUVs the high net worth individuals will be driving on too when they move here under the CIG remote working bubble arrangement.
Old and failing infrastructure , power network , phones , schools. , roads . Forget all those issues, better to go independent under the “Eden Manifesto”.
Some of us had no water all morning too.
Thanks CNS, but your headline is missing one:
It should have been: Eta arrives quicker and closer and stronger!
40mph winds dont cause wooden ligthpoles to break.
CUC again proven not to have learned its lesson with wooden power poles breaking and coming down.
NWS behind with current events- intensity of storm hitting earlier than NWS stating didn’t help matters.
I understand some people may have been inconvenienced temporarily but why the mass hysteria over some gusts and heavy rain. No one as far as I know got hurt but yet the whole island shuts down?
Think of it this way: You know how several places are flooded right now? The difference between an inconvenient flood and a catastrophic one is a matter of 100 miles. This has been an aberrant storm. Imagine your children were in school, and you found out that the storm had either ramped up or dipped down to be closer than projected. Suddenly, all traffic is stalled, you can’t get to your children, and everything is chaos. You would likely blame your government for having not closed up everything.
The government must take a worst case. Governments everywhere do exactly that. You may say, “I don’t care, I don’t have children and I don’t care about other people’s children” and that would soundly identify you as an outsider that doesn’t matter. Not really. You are for yourself.
Started off with good points, then the outsider comment…..
I know. You are right and I contemplated it. Perhaps you can suggest a less offensive term for a person who doesn’t care about the children of our islands.
21,000 people without power today for some as you put it “gusts and heavy rain”
You are a complete dunderhead. This is exactly WHY we closed so that no one got hurt. Furthermore it wasn’t just “some wind and rain” you asshat. We have extensive flooding in many areas, trees and down, power lines, etc.
Dunderhead 😃
#caymandrama
Growing up in Scotland lI cannot recall one day where schools were closed for anything, even in the worst of snowstorms, but there were always multiple routes to take, underground power, good reliable public transport Etc. In Cayman with exposed high tension power distribution and flood prone areas it is just too dangerous to be out in anything above 40 mph winds. We saw today, power poles snapping in what would be called a stiff breeze in Europe. So, not so much the weather but the aging exposed infrastructure. I really do not know why there has not been more of a push to lay underground power.
8:18 we aren’t Scotland. Furthermore, Hurricanes and snowstorms have nothing in common. Next
Hurricanes and snowstorms have nothing in common says someone who obviously has never lived in Canada where we had ice storms that shut off power to hundreds of thousands of people for a week or more in the dead of winter while the falling freezing rain made roads impassable, leaving people stranded to freeze (literally). Hurricanes are not the only natural disaster
Perhaps you should try reading the comment, it is in response to another and why we have to be cautious. There was no comparison with snowstorms amd hurricames it was a comparison of infrastructure.
Perhaps you should try reading the comment, it is in response to another and why we have to be cautious. There was no comparison with snowstorms and hurricanes it was a comparison of infrastructure.
No we are not Scotland or Canada. We are much more advanced here than those places. We are simply a brilliant people.
have you ever dug a hole in cayman? water table not good for underground power
Hurricane Delta of 2-3 weeks ago intensified from a category 2 to a 4 within half an hour.
You can tell who went through Ivan and who didn’t.
Eta shows how unpredictable these things are. The National Hurricane Centre and the CI Weather Service were both off on this one. Eta got much nearer than forecast (30 miles NNW), was much earlier (morning instead of afterno0n), and was strengthening (50mph) as it passed GCM. The hurricane recon plane even recorded 71mph winds just north of GCM before noon today.
Had a gust of 66 at Rum Point at 7:30 this morning.
Just goes to show how bad it would get here if a proper storm came through. We should treat this as a trainer exercise and learn from it.
Exactly right.
Well if we didn’t learn from Ivan then we’ll never ever know, I’ve been prepared from then, over 16 years ago.
CUC overloaded the poles.
With ?
Too much hardware obviously. That little breeze shouldn’t have snapped those poles.
Blame the telecoms for that, all other equipment on the poles are for electricity
Over priced power
Been saying that for years and especially after hurricane IVAN!! The explanation that I got from an “experienced cuc management personnel ” it will be too costly to maintain. I don’t think that Dart will take the more costly route, all his supply is underground. That is why solar is the way to go!!!
Perhaps if we funded underground power/phone lines, we might then have room for proper walking/bike paths. As it is, most people I talk with are scared to ride on our roads. I think this is likely the primary way of relieving our traffic woes.
Wow our poles are really weak. The wind wasn’t EXTREMELY strong for them to have fallen like that. We really do have weak infrastructure.
Heard lightning knocked the poles in red bay
Come on CNS posters can’t you fix the weather. You claim to be able to fix everything else zzzzzzzzzzz
They are isolating.
10:34 they have something to say about everything but no real solutions.
Wow, the storm hasn’t even arrived and the power lines have already been destroyed. It’s like a paper house.
Save us Alden
Alden? Save us? Ha ha ha ha!
So, government. Any chance of putting more electricity infrastructure underground? We cannot be a modern connected society and literally lose contact with the world because of a Tropical Storm (not a hurricane). Camana Bay can do it? Why can’t George Town?
Seriously.
1. It’s an eyesore
2. It’s safer
3. It’s better long term
Spend the money one time and save long term
And doing it can provide employment to many unemployed Caymanians.
Absolutely. All great points. Hopefully the politicians will see this and act on it…
Caymanians need to get themselves ready to hear “we don’t have the money” a lot very soon. And to answer your question Camana bay has Dart and his team. Government has Caymanians. Dart makes and has money and Caymanians spent all their money for the next couple of years.
During flooding of any salt water will destroy underground electrical infrastructure with a massive cost and very long repair jobs. Overhead is less stable but easier to repair, also channeling through rock is very cost prohibitive Caymana bay was a swamp of fresh water.
So the cable across north sound supplying electricity to Northside is in fresh water?
Different kind of cable. The junctions on either end are not under the salt water.
The problem with underground cabling remains that if/when there is (salt) water intrusion its much harder/longer/expensive to fix.
so its not as simple as saying ‘underground is better’. There’s just different ‘costs’ to underground and poles.
Understood. But probably well worth in investment. A modern connected Cayman cannot afford to be knocked out for weeks after a hurricane.
1:44pm Most intelligent comment ever, you sir/ma’am have just restored my faith back with cns commenters, thank you.
Explain the distribution cable crossing North Sound. That not saltwater?
Undersea cables are transmission cables and not distribution cables. A distribution cable has multiple spur lines with multiple connections which would all be underwater and subject to corrosion which could be hard to detect and much harder to replace.
Doh, they are insulated. The reason why cables are not put underground is cost. It costs 7x as much too run cables underground.
You know they run power cables under sea right?
Because putting it underground means longer repair times when it does flood, apparently. Plus costs more. So its a balance: pay a bit less up front, with more frequent short duration outages, or pay more up front for less weather-interrupted service but longer to restore power when it is a significant event. – People’s preference on the above choices will vary.
But the details would make a good article for some enterprising reporter and leave us all better informed for forming our opinions.
Also its power & telephone lines, plus water pipes already under roads, so its 2-4 utilities to work together to achieve this well. But what CIG could do is spin off/up a heavily regulated independent utility connectivity company responsible for water, telephone and electricity underground conduiting around all three islands (GC income subsidising sister islands; unless we want to discuss those islands separately – but its the same debate as west half of GC subsidising East half and why out east they have poorer internet). Then the different service producers could compete on cost and customer service and we could all just have one connectivity provider to complain about. And hold to published level-of-connection standards and profit margins.
We do have an organization but sadly everyone is running in into the ground and don’t understand the full story when they complain and expect miracles to come out, reform to fix or re-establish from scratch? You decide.
Hermetically sealed conductors underground do not need repair, unless they are cut. You seriously need to come up with better arguments for overhead power distribution in residential areas.
Exactly
Yup. Like when the hermetically sealed cross-Sound power cable got ‘cut’ in Ivan and was down for how much longer than the light poles?
The point isn’t that underground lines are not robust. They will have fewer interruptions than pole-based lines. The point is that when there is an interruption it takes longer and costs more to fix it (on average, etc.).
Though I take it you’re positing some sort of mixed-grid where the feeder lines are above-ground but the distribution lines are below ground. (At least in densely occupied regularly laid out subdevelopments.) That could work, but it only moderates existing cost/convenience question, not invalidates it.
Except that power is here to stay and a very long term investment. While costs will be higher to install underground, in the long run it is likely more cost effective.
Thank you CNS for the updates!
Isn’t it too early for the power outages? Can’t be that infrastructure is that weak.
Transformer pole blew down in Red Bay.
CUC map shows wide spread outages.
Sorry that’s the only one that I knew about at the time. Not sure what caused the other outages. Probably high winds. Fallen poles is to be expected. It’s a Tropical Storm and it’s very close.
More than meets the eye.
Infrastructures not weak,winds just too strong.
not yet
If we live in an island that gets hit by hurricanes than the infrastructure should stay up in a tropical storm. It’s purely not maintained equipment