{"id":7013,"date":"2014-10-26T20:50:43","date_gmt":"2014-10-27T02:50:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/drfumblefinger.com\/wrdprs\/?p=7013"},"modified":"2018-03-21T22:11:01","modified_gmt":"2018-03-22T04:11:01","slug":"coping-with-hurricana-ana-kauai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/drfumblefinger.com\/blog\/2014\/10\/coping-with-hurricana-ana-kauai\/","title":{"rendered":"Coping with Hurricana Ana, Kauai"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s not every day a traveler has to deal with a hurricane — especially when vacationing in the South Pacific.  My first brushes with one were exciting in a way, but tedious in most respects.<\/p>\n

I’ve experienced a number of “natural disasters” in my life, ranging from significant earthquakes while living in California to brush fires that were close to our home.  And, of course, Canada is known for its blizzards and severe cold weather.  But I’ve never had to deal with extremes of tropical weather before.<\/p>\n

While attending a medical meeting on the Big Island of Hawaii, I became aware that tropical storm Ana was forming and gaining strength hundreds of miles southeast of the Big Island and moving on a course that would hit the south shore of the Big Island exactly on the day I wanted to fly from Kona to Kauai, the next island stop on this trip (and the beginning of my vacation).  Not being one to procrastinate, I immediately called Hawaiian Airlines and had our flights rescheduled to leave a day earlier than originally planned, allowing me a day’s buffer to get away from the Big Island before the worst weather would hit and potentially ground all air travel (disrupting my travel plans for who knows how long).  Rooms and car rentals had to be rearranged, but I thought we could just bunker down on Kauai where we’d be staying for most of a week.<\/p>\n

\"Spouting

Spouting Horn, Kauai<\/p><\/div>\n

The most annoying thing about these darned weather disturbances is that you don’t know how bad they’ll be or exactly where they’ll move to next.  Forecasts are far from an accurate prediction of the future, as I was to about find out, and the media (besides being generally dishonest) love to promote a feeling of doom and hysteria, and that certainly was the case with Ana, which had been upgraded from Tropical Storm to Category I hurricane status.<\/p>\n

Come Friday morning we (my brother, father and I) caught our flights from the Big Island to Lihue, transferring in Honolulu.  It was a warm beautiful day on Kauai, not at all windy, and everything went swimmingly well.   We enjoyed several nice days on Kauai while Ana kept changing where she was supposed to go, ultimately veering far south from the Big Island (but hitting its coast with strong tropical storm force winds and heavy rain) and began heading towards Oahu and Kauai.<\/p>\n

On our second day we visited the south shore of Kauai, beautiful as is all of this island (more on that in future posts).  In the evening we could feel the wind intensify and the waves started crashing onto shore with force and height, spraying a salty mist on those gathering to watch.  Ana was introducing herself to us, and she had a way of drawing hundreds to the island’s shore to just stand and watch.   The following two video clips share with you what we saw the day before she was to show us her full force.<\/p>\n

Coastal surge:  <\/a><\/p>\n