HURRICANE IVAN - SEPTEMBER 11-12, 2004 - MEMORIES??? Pictures???

[Weathermon & Mi Lady]

I remember how I watched this hurricane spawn off the African coast and make a beeline for Jamaica. I remember how all of us at the time were praying and hoping that Ivan would somehow change course. Thankfully, it did wobble just enough West, off of it's bulls-eye course, on September 10 that the eye stayed south of Jamaica by about 20 miles. The destruction and loss of life was bad enough and certainly the west end took a hit, but it could have been so much worse.

[Weathermon & Mi Lady]

This image is from the NHC archives.

[Johio]

I belive this was the first time I saw Rob as he did webcasts from his back yard. Been hooked on webcasts ever since.

[Living_the_Dream]

The following is a letter I wrote shortly after Hurricane Ivan made landfall in northwest Florida. As I look back the letter sounds selfish in some ways but it was heartfelt when I wrote it. Since that fateful night things are different, I am different, our trip to Jamaica was saved due to the hard work of all the workers at Tensing Pen and Negril getting things put back together. Our house as since been repaired, our yard is beautiful, we are well and yes we are in the same house, no we did not move, we finally realized this is our home and we will rebuilt that home. We now know how to prepare for events like this. I can only hope that know one ever has to experience a night like that. While it was hard on us I can't even imagine how some of the families in countries like Jamaica could ever recover.


The Sheer Terror and Heart Break of Hurricane Ivan

I writing this to hopefully help myself stop feeling sorry for myself, to hope to make others understand the terror and heartbreak the Jamaican’s, Cayman’s, Grenadine’s and Northwest Floridan’s went through on those fateful days and nights of Hurricane Ivan. I have been through Hurricanes Camille, Eloise, Erin, Opal and other smaller hurricanes but never anything like this. Some have done damage to my house, some have done damage to Jamaica but none have every taken everything all in the same year or much less by the same storm.

Ivan has most probably taken not only my trip to the beautiful Negril and Tensing Pen as we were booked in the Cove Cottage Nov 26th to Dec 5th. Cove Cottage was destroyed by Ivan and even though Tensing Pen plans to be open by November 1st it is unlikely that they will have rebuilt Cove Cottage by the time our trip comes and they are full in the other remaining units.

Now closer to home, we have spent 10 years landscaping our house and in the course of 12 hours we lost everything. We had 15 beautiful shade trees none of which are left, fence completely destroyed, other bushes, shrubs and flower beds were destroyed by falling trees, fencing or roof. Oh yeah we lost the roof! The carpet is ruined by the water the came through the doors, windows and other cracks. The wind was so hard it blew the water right in, starting over here in Destin Florida.

Some people have said we were lucky because the house was ok but I don’t see it that way if the house was gone I could rebuild it in 6 months but all the work on the exterior of my house I could never replace in a life time. Some of the shade trees were 30 to 50 years old, even if I replant they won’t be back in my lifetime. The face of my property will never be the same and that goes for the face of Destin, Navarre, Pensacola, Gulf Breeze, Perdido Key and Gulf Shores.

My sister in law last even more as two feet of storm surge came into their house ruining everything. They are in Gulf Breeze across the Santa Rosa Sound from Pensacola Beach. For the storm surge to get to their house if first had to go all the way across Pensacola Beach then through the Santa Rosa Sound then through a ½ mile of houses then reaching theirs. They lost everything, and I mean everything. There only possessions are what they took to the shelter that night.

I am in total shock and heartbreak over the losses. I know once we have cleaned up and put things back together we will be moving. This will never be home again! On the positive side you find out who your real friends are. My best Friend is from Nashville Tennessee and has been going to Negril with us for over 10 years. He and his family were following Hurricane Ivan and knew the Damage the Islands had already suffered and feared for us. On the morning after Ivan the called to see if we were ok, we told them our story. He then said he had a truck loaded with a generator for Power, a window ac, food, water, chain saws and fuel and were headed our way to help in clean up. Then the owner of our company called to see how the store was and how the other employees and I fared as they are a hour east of us and had little damage. Once again I told him our story the other employees had fared well, the store was fine but our house looked like a bomb had gone off. We are in the fishing industry and have a walk in cooler full of frozen bait that was thawing and he said he had two guys to come and get the bait that day. Once he heard of our dilemma he said he would put together a work crew and be at the house in less than 2 hours. They arrived just before my friend and his dad From Nashville Tennessee that had left a 3 in the morning. That afternoon my boss, the manage of our Panama city store, manager of my Port St Joe store and Warehouse manager plus Corey and his dad and myself managed to cut our way thought the forest of down trees to the house.

What those guys did in a day would have taken me by my self to Christmas but now I left with a naked house on a bare loft with no roof or carpet. Don’t get me wrong I am so grateful to those guys as I could never pay them back for their efforts I broke down in tears when they showed up and when they left, but it is still so heartbreaking. I cannot imagine how all those in the tiny island nations every made it through theirs nights of horror. How will they ever clean up and get back to normal? What is normal?

I pray for my wife Mary our 2 beagles Sadie and Pooh Bear, all the Jamaican’s, the other Islanders, Floridian’s and myself to somehow come out of this better and stronger. Better and stronger? What do they mean? I hear this all the time it will make you better and stronger but I don’t know what it means.

The tally on Ivan category 5 Hurricane 165 mile per hour winds, storm surge 20 feet in places, 50 foot waves, dozens of tornadoes, devastation from the Antilles through the Caribbean and into the states from Florida to New York. Massive loss of life, one is one to many, countless dollars lost and lives changed forever.

Thankful we are alive, thankful our friends in Jamaica are alive, thankful our friends in the US are alive, thankful we have made new friends in our Neighborhood we never knew existed. Heartbroken over our losses.

Please forgive my but these are just a few of my thoughts in the aftermath of hurricane Ivan. I am exhausted and sore, I did not know some of these muscles existed. There are weeks of clean up left, I only pray that somehow Tensing Pen can rebuild Cove Cottage and that I can get to Negril for some much need relaxation.

Irie

Tim Broom

Sept 19, 2004
6:59 PM

[Rambo]

Where did the tree go, it was there a second ago??

I was watching live from CoCoLapalm's Live Cam, when Ivan hit....I grabbed two screen shots, when a tree disappeared before my eyes......I couldn't believe it!

[Living_the_Dream]

NRL Measures Record Wave during Hurricane Ivan
August 4, 2005
Scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory—Stennis Space Center (NRL-SSC) measured a record-size ocean wave when the eye of Hurricane Ivan passed over NRL moorings deployed last May in the Gulf of Mexico. The possibility of a super wave is often suggested by anecdotal evidence such as damage caused by Hurricane Ivan in September of 2004 to an offshore rig in the Gulf of Mexico that was nearly 80 feet above the ocean surface. Hence, some of the destruction done by Ivan has been attributed to a rogue wave. According to industry and national weather sources, the damage done by waves during Ivan has been on the extreme high end for a category 4 hurricane.

During NRL’s Slope to Shelf Energetics and Exchange Dynamics (SEED) field experiment, six current profiler moorings that also contained wave/tide gauges (Sea-Bird Electronics SBE 26) were deployed on the continental shelf at water depths ranging between 60 and 90 meters (197-295 feet) just west of the DeSoto Canyon, about 100 miles south of Mobile Bay, Alabama. An additional eight deep moorings were deployed down the shelf slope but did not contain wave/tide gauges. Fortuitously, between 8:00 pm CDST and midnight on September 15, the eye of Ivan passed through the center of the array, and almost directly over moorings 2, 5, 8, and 11. Historically, instruments in the ocean do not even survive near misses of such powerful storms, much less direct hits. Fortunately, all of the SEED moorings survived this powerful storm, and provided the best ocean measurements of currents and waves ever obtained directly under a major hurricane.
During the approach of Ivan, a moored buoy (ID 42040), deployed by the National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) near the west side of the SEED array, registered a significant wave height of 16.0 meters (53 feet). Unfortunately, the NDBC buoy broke loose and was set adrift on September 15 at 5:00 pm CDST, just before the arrival of the main force of the hurricane. According to a spokesman at NDBC, this wave height appears to be the largest ever reported by NDBC from a hurricane and comes within a few tenths of a meter of NDBC’s all-time record reported in the North Pacific. Note that the wave heights reported by the NDBC buoys are derived from wave spectra.

[Weathermon & Mi Lady]

Thanks all for your pictures, experiences, and memories!

[Weathermon & Mi Lady]

Where did the tree go, it was there a second ago??

I was watching live from CoCoLapalm's Live Cam, when Ivan hit....I grabbed two screen shots, when a tree disappeared before my eyes......I couldn't believe it!

Incredible! Looks like the tree was snapped in half!

[Lady Jane]

Ironically I was desperate to reach friends in Grand Cayman. I managed to have a friend go look for another friend and all were safe, although Brian did have a sail boat in his yard, a mile and half inland. And a few days later it made land fall here, in Prince Edward Island , Canada but first cut a path across Nova Scotia. I am ashamed to say I did not prepare our cottag and ourselves enough. We hadn't even gassed up the van. Since then I take Hurricanes seriously even here in the North East of Canada. Ivan landed as Cat 1. Cayman however didn't fare as well. At one point the sea separated Grand Cayman into 2 islands with lots and lots of destruction that is still visible there.

[Rambo]

Incredible! Looks like the tree was snapped in half!

yes and before it left it wasnt bending....I blinked and it was just gone...looks like about 2 ft from the bottom is left.......camera went dead shortly after............we were one of the first planes into MoBay after Gilbert did its thing in '88....what a mess..... Jamaicans just keep fightin back...no place to go, they gotta keep fightin.......God give 'em strength.......