July 15, 2010

So it begins

The first typhoon of the season lashed the northern and eastern part of the Philippines Tuesday night. As I write this, 21 people are known to have been killed and sixty are missing. Basyang (international code name Conson) didn't bring much rain in our part of Quezon City, though I hear that it caused floods in other parts of Luzon. The worst of it in our area was at 4:00PM and it let up just in time to let office workers go home relatively dry. I really ought to have something done about the pathway to our office building—because of the slope of the terrain, it always gets inundated when rains are strong and becomes quite useless as a path.

the start of the rains from typhoon Basyang (Conson) causing puddles on a path


The winds of Basyang were another matter altogether, however: sustained winds of 120 kph (74 mph) and gusts of up to 150 kph (93 mph). We lost power at home at 11:00PM of Tuesday and I wasn't the only one who had a tough time sleeping that night, not only because of the noise of the howling wind, but because of the fear that I might hear a part of the roof being torn away or a tree falling on the house. This was the scene that greeted me when I got to the office yesterday morning, off to one side of the path above. Power at our house was restored yesterday at 3:00PM, and we are one of the lucky ones. Metro Manila's power distributor, Meralco, estimates that it needs two to three more days to restore power to its entire grid, which also covers much of the island of Luzon. As the colleague of a friend tweeted, "Blackouts, howling winds, heavy rains, falling trees and flying billboards. Welcome to typhoon country, Philippine-style!"

aftermath of typhoon Basyang (Conson)

22 comments:

VP said...

Pouring rain in the morning on the Bastille Day parade, here in Paris.
Sun in the afternoon...

Anonymous said...

The amount of energy felt must be incredible. May time and life keep you safe.

daily athens

Paulina Millaman said...

That's the magic of planet earth!!!
here in chile we are suffering from the coldest winter we ever had and some tremors and aftershocks in between
nice picture :)
paulina

George said...

I'm glad the damage wasn't any worse and that you made it through the storm relatively unscathed.

Halcyon said...

Uh-oh. Stay safe!!!

escape said...

im a bit dissapointed with pagasa because we didnt expect such devastation.

lewi14@gmail.com said...

Very "nice" shots. Mother nature can be life-giving and bio-destructible at the same time.

Louis la Vache said...

Wow...
Your description of the typhoon reminds «Louis» of growing up in the Texas panhandle, which is the southern end of "Tornado Alley". Tornados there did things similar to the typhoon there. He particularly remembers the night of 11 May 1970 when two tornados ripped through his hometown, flooding streets with the sweeping rain, destroying the power grid and ripping up some 200 blocks of the city and killing some 26 people and injuring more than 500. It destroyed a 22 story building downtown. «Louis» is glad you are safe.

Olivier said...

impressionnante cette eau, nous avons eut la même chose pour la fête du 14 juillet (heureusement a Évry, la fête nationale est avancée au 13, ouf )

Cezar and Léia said...

I hope everything is better now, please stay safe!
Hugs
Léia

brattcat said...

My heart is pounding just thinking of the destructive energy of the storm. You describe it well, Hilda. I'm so sorry for the people who were lost and hope that you and everyone else stays safe through the remainder of this typhoon season.

arabesque said...

hi hilds, lucky you! 3pm?! grbe! we waited till 2am lang nmn, imagine the agony of wating! haha. ^0^

Lois said...

I immediately thought of you Hilda when I heard about this storm on the news. Glad to hear you are safe. We are already into hurricane season here, but the worst part of it doesn't start until August and I am dreading it because they are predicting a very active season this year. I can never sleep during one of those storms for fear of the wind, so I know exactly how you were feeling. Stay safe my friend!

Kaori said...

It's been flooding here, too. Although I don't think it's a typhoon. Most of the damage comes from mud slides. I hope you and your family are safe tonight.

Francisca said...

Glad you are safe, Hilda. The strangest thing I heard about this typhoon of ours is the huge crane that fell off the Skyway (upper highway being built) onto the Sucat/highway intersection. That is the exit we use when going to Makati, so we stayed put in the south.

EG CameraGirl said...

Typhoon season is not something to look forward to, that's for sure...but WOW! That sure is a lot of dead and missing persons!

Life Is A Road Trip said...

Our monsoon season has nothing on your typhoon season. I hope and pray that you and your friends and family will be safe. If you can manage to send some rain our way, we'll take it.

Les Barr said...

Even though I was never in one of those Typhoon's, I can remember being off the coast of Vietnam when it would rain. It would pour buckets for about 15 min. and then stop. The sun would come back out and the ship would literally steam from the heat. 105 degrees I seem to remember.

Try and stay dry over there, Hilda, and be careful.

Les

Stefan Jansson said...

Horrible news. Been reading about this in the news today.

Lowell said...

Boy, I feel for you! We've yet to have any hurricanes but the weather folks are forecasting more than normal! Ugh!

No fun at all!

AB said...

Some storm! I hope your roof is still intact!

apple said...

the month of June or July is really the moths where rainy season begins. Just like now, according to the latest news about Philippine storm, this month of June, we already hit by 4 typhoons. Those storms also brought heavy rains and floods to those places that prone to floods.