August started slowly. We kept up the house and Carey got together the supplies we would need should a hurricane come our way. I started work on Paget, replacing some wood, varnishing and painting.
Toward the end of the month, the hurricane came. Hurricane Dorian was the fourth named storm, second hurricane, and first major hurricane of the 2019 Atlantic hurricane season, Dorian developed from a tropical wave on August 24 in the Central Atlantic. The system gradually intensified while moving toward the Lesser Antilles, before becoming a hurricane on August 28. Rapid intensification ensued, and on August 31, Dorian intensified into a Category 4 major hurricane. On the following day, Dorian reached Category 5 intensity, peaking with one-minute sustained winds of 185 mph and a minimum central pressure of 910 millibars while making landfall in Elbow Cay, Bahamas, at 16:40 UTC. Dorian made another landfall on Grand Bahama several hours later, near the same intensity. The ridge of high pressure steering Dorian westward collapsed on September 2, causing Dorian to stall just north of Grand Bahama for about a day. It is the strongest known tropical system to impact the Bahamas. Shortly after, a combination of cold water upwelling and an eye wall replacement cycle weakened Dorian to a Category 2 hurricane by the next day. On the morning of September 3, Dorian began to move slowly towards the north-northwest. Dorian subsequently completed its eye wall replacement cycle and moved over warmer waters, regaining Category 3 intensity by midnight on September 5. In the early hours of September 6, Dorian weakened to Category 1 intensity as it picked up speed and turned northeast. At 12:35 UTC on September 6, Dorian made landfall in the U.S. at Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Luckily for us it turned north after going through the Bahamas and missed us.
Worried that the storm would come ashore at us we evacuated to George and Polly’s place in Sebring, FL for the first part of September while the storm was near Port St. Lucie. George had some medical appointments so we visited a day and they left their place to use as they traveled to the west coast of Florida and stayed with George’s daughter to get to his appointments.
We’re now barely into September and hoping we only see one hurricane this year.