April May and June. What can we say? We arrived home from Antigua to a dreary April and May. We moved to the island at the end of April and have been doing "the usual" - gardening, cooking shopping, gardening, cooking shopping. Towards the end of June it looked as if summer might actually start.
And then there was Arthur, the very first tropical storm/hurricane of the season. He grazed the east coast of the US (spoiling the July 4 weekend for many Americans), and then set sights for Nova Scotia, arriving as a post-tropical storm, but packing almost hurricane winds. Landing at Yarmouth he headed along the Chignecto Bay coast, but with a wide swath of high winds.
So from Thursday, July 3 we were in "get ready" mode, putting deck furniture away and preparing for the 50 mm of rain that was promised. We took the cape boat (Camioneta) to Indian Point and left it on our mooring there - this was more sheltered with a more recently installed mooring than at the island. We returned to the island to keep an eye on things here, knowing that if the power went out we at least had a generator to keep us going.
By Saturday morning the winds were blowing strongly from the ESE and a good sea was building. Through the morning the wind shifted to the south and then to the west. We watched Camioneta on the mooring with our webcam and she was riding the seas well. By the time the wind came to the west there was a good deal of shelter at Indian Point, and we didn't worry about her any more. The rain fizzled - a few drops - mostly because the storm was further north than expected.
In the early afternoon the power went out - it had been going off and on occasionally during the morning. But now things were just plain dead. And the wind got very strong from the west. We have seldom seen such seas arriving at the dock and breaking on the shore. The floats at the dock rode the waves well, and we were pleased that we had lifted the ramp so it wouldn't pound on the floats. Standing on the dock was a challenge, and we clocked around 40 knots of wind, but were unable to measure the gusts. I have posted one of the videos I took - check My Movies.
By Sunday the winds had dropped somewhat, and later in the day we took the small boat to Indian Point to collect Camioneta and bring her back to the island. Lots of leaves and branches down and scattered on the lawns, but no damage we could see. Back on the island it was a different story, Many large trees were down, including a very large poplar behind the guest cabin. This tree had become tangled with a couple of others, so was leaning heavily but not getting to the ground yet. I have posted pictures of some of the mess, but when you have seen one tree down, you get the picture when we tell you that there were a dozen more. The ground was littered with bits of green branches - most of this year's new growth was blown away, and many other leaves were shredded by the wind. One small tree side swiped the boat shed and took out both webcams - one of them I had just installed two days earlier!
On Tuesday, Peter managed to fell the poplar and two spruce that were holding it up, while Terry replanted the two small pines that would have been crushed when those trees came down. There is lots of "chain saw cleanup", but nothing is urgent.
Power is still out, and we have been running the generator as needed to keep the fridge cold and the water running. NS Power says we will have power back by Wednesday night, but that remains to be seen, as there is a good deal of work to repair the lines that were brought down by falling trees.