Hurricanes, Earthquakes, and Meteors; oh my!
Sitting out on my porch tonight, enjoying the lovely sunset over the ocean and waiting for Hurricane Flossie, I saw a freakishly close meteorite (at least I think that’s what it was since I’ve not seen anything like that before) go down into the water, probably about 10 miles out, if that. I could see the large fireball streak down through the dusky sky, in a sort of serpentine curve, leaving a trail of white smoke in its wake. We live at altitude so I had a very good view. What’s weird is, it seemed to break apart as it came down, and one of the pieces just hung there in the sky, burning like a bright white piece of smoke or something, I don’t know; not moving, just hanging there, gradually streaking out horizontally as it was pulled by the wind. Maybe it was the setting sun behind a dense puff of smoke, but it sure looked weird. I watched it for about 20 minutes, half-expecting it to suddenly take off or something.
Ok, maybe I spend too much time on the Internet looking at weird stuff. Probably a remnant of the Perseids…but I only saw a few tiny, very distant streaks the other night, and this was nothing like that.
Then I came in, opened my laptop to check my email, thinking about what I’d just seen, when we had a 5.3 earthquake (according to IRIS it was a 5.6). We had that big one back in October here and another smaller but also sizable one on Thanksgiving morning, but nothing much we could feel since then (though there are often small earthquakes going on because of the volcano, we don’t usually feel them up here)…this one was rolling and rocking back and forth, and seemed to keep going for quite a while, at least in earthquake time (slow-motion disaster/should-I-panic mode). Not violent enough to knock anything over but significant enough to make you stop what you’re doing, in that state of alertness or anticipation, not knowing if you should jump up and save the statues or not.
Hmm. A strong hurricane is on its way, which isn’t unheard of, but if it really does hit us here on the Big Island it will be a relatively rare event, because most hurricanes are pushed away by our winds. Only two or five hurricanes have hit the state of Hawaii since 1950, depending on what you define as hurricanes versus tropical cyclones. The last destructive hurricane to hit Hawaii was Iniki in 1992, which hit Kauai hard, but my friends who lived here then said it was sunny that day for them. Hurricane Dot, in 1959, also did most of its damage in Kauai. Three other lesser storms have also caused major damage, but very little of it here on the Big Island aside from some high surf.
So, my friends, what do you think? Coincidence? My money is still on Flossie fizzling out, though we may get some stormy skies for awhile (and probably lose power, because, hey, that’s Hawaii; sometimes, we lose power just for no reason at all!).
On the other hand if we get slammed hard I’m calling DARPA. Personally, I don’t really believe in coincidence.
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I’m glad we dont have earthquakes or hurricans up here in Canada, but I did see a huge meteor as well on Saturday night, bright yellow with a trail of smoke behind it, too cool!, I wrote a post awhile back, martians, venusians, lunarians, oh my, lol
Eh, Flossie seems to be fizzling a bit, you will get rain, but you ought to be ok. Stay safe, though.
Gee, I’m glad we were there when things weren’t quite so interesting!
Thanks, Donna. Seriously; you picked a good time. So far Kona is still calm and peaceful. Even saw the stars tonight. We’ll see if any of the storm makes it here overnight.
Sometimes I think all these events are a reflection of the state of the world populations consciousness. That the darker of mind people become, the more disasters seem to happen all at once.