It's a bird.....it's a plane....it's a.....worm?

I’m happy to report that we have endured and survived our first Okinawan typhoon.   Typhoons are a common occurrence on this island.  This past May it was predicted that 31 tropical cyclones, 27 tropical storms, and 17 typhoons would form in the North West Pacific this year.   A typhoon and a hurricane are very similar--they're both tropical cyclones, except a typhoon occurs in the Northwest Pacific and a hurricane occurs in the Atlantic off the coasts of Florida, North Carolina, and South Carolina….all places we’ve lived.  Hmmmm….do I have a bulls eye on my back?    Luckily, typhoons are not usually as strong as Atlantic hurricanes.  There are basically two categories of typhoons--regular typhoons (Hurricane Category 1-3) and Super Typhoons (Hurricane Category 4-5.)   Okinawa is very prepared to handle these storms, so as the typhoon approached we felt cautiously optimistic that we would come through relatively unscathed. 

The military around here has also set up a very specific plan for what to do in preparation for a storm.  A while back, the higher-ups set up a warning system for service members and dependants living on Okinawa.  Throughout the bases you’ll see signs stating the “TCCOR” level.  Remember how I told you that these military folks love acronyms?  Well, here’s another one for you.   TCCOR stands for “Tropical Cyclone Condition Of Readiness” but everyone around here pronounces it “Tee-Cor”  Each level instructs us to do certain things.  Here’s the list of what each level means and what we’re supposed to do:

We reached TCCOR-1E on Thursday evening last week.  That meant we were “ordered” to stay indoors until we were given the all clear.  They take these TCCOR levels very seriously.  Let’s say I decided to go get some donuts while 90mph winds were howling outside.  I could find myself on the next plane back to the U.S. for violating the TCCOR order.   Luckily, we’ve prepared for hurricanes before and we knew what kinds of things we I had to do.  Monday I went to the commissary and stocked up on bottled water, bread, milk and batteries.  (You heard that right, PI people…I went to the commissary on a Monday!)   By Wednesday, we’d used up all the bread and milk so I was back to the Commissary fighting all those other procrastinators for the last of the bread and milk.   I also spent Wednesday afternoon wrestling the patio furniture and other outside things back into the house so they wouldn’t fly away into our new neighbors’ windows.   If our little cottage wasn’t crowded enough before, it was certainly filled to the gills now.  We finally reached TCCOR-1C on Thursday afternoon.  At this point, all non-essential personnel were to return home and stay there until the typhoon passed.   Naturally, Bill had “a few more things to finish up” so he didn’t actually get home for a few hours.  I was getting a little worried that he was going to get trapped in the storm and end up hugging a tree (like those old Gilligan’s Island episodes.)  Luckily, he finally made it home and we hunkered down for the duration of the storm. 

The Weather Gurus had originally predicted that Typhoon Muifa would be in the Category 2-3 range (a regular typhoon) and the worst of it would occur late Friday morning, and by Friday afternoon the rain and strong winds should have calmed considerably.  Well, Muifa had other plans.  She (He? I don't know...) decided to slow down and dump a near record-breaking 41 INCHES of rain on Okinawa.  When I woke up Saturday morning the patio was flooding and the water was getting dangerously close to coming in through the sliding glass doors.  So, in pre-coffee mode, I ran around the living room moving all the low-lying books and electronics to higher ground.  Shortly after that, we found this (not-so) little refugee. 

That's right...it's a worm.  A WORM!  You know things are bad when these guys are escaping the storm.  Not wanting to start a precedent (and to my childrens' horror), I used a pencil to gently fling him back out onto the patio. You let one worm in, they're all going to start wiggling in the door.  

Here's a little video I took during the worst of it, because, of course....I want to bridge the miles between us and this way you get to vicariously live life on Okinawa.  See how much I care about you?  Next thing you know I'll be tethered to a tree like one of those Weather Channel guys: 

It got a little rough for a while there, but nothing was damaged.  We did have a little water in the laundry room.  My dad will appreciate this picture:



Yes, that the bottom of our grill in our laundry
room.  I told you things were crowded!



As you can imagine, there’s not much to do when you’re trapped indoors with 4 kids for 2 days.  We did a lot of this:

And this...

And this....

We were saving most of our low-tech activities for when the power went out (because the power would certainly go out!) but to our surprise the electricity stayed on the entire time.  We consider ourselves very lucky in this regard because we know many other neighborhoods lost power for several hours. 

You know what else we did?   We ate.  A LOT.  I don’t know if it was the boredom or what, but we could not stop snacking.  We ate through a whole batch of home made chocolate chip cookies, several bags of chips, a package of fig newtons, and some other junk food.  Of course all that snacking made us thirsty and by Saturday morning we were running low on milk, which led to this sign being posted on the refrigerator:



Finally, finally by Saturday afternoon, the winds started to calm down as Typhoon Muifa decided to bother our neighbors in China.   Damage throughout the area was quite minimal.  A few trees down here and there; a few shingles off the roof of the Exchange...but by Sunday the whole place was back to business as usual.  I was very impressed. 

Which begs the question...Why in the hell don't American builders consult Japanese builders when it comes to making hurricane-proof structures?  Not once was I worried that the house was going to blow apart during our typhoon.  These homes have been here for 40-50 years.  You'd think at some point during that time there would have been some sort of Building Summit between our two nations where the Japanese guys could have whispered to the Americans, "Pssst...Hey....the way to keep houses from flying away during storms is....._________.  Maybe they still have hard feelings towards us?  Who knows.  What also gets me is that every now and then on the news back home you'll see a story where someone has invented some new way to protect homes during hurricanes, and it's like they just invented the wheel.  Apparently the people around these parts have held the secret for a long time!

That's pretty much the end of the story.  In this situation, I'm glad that it was rather uneventful.  And, from what I hear, this story will repeat itself many times while we're living on this island.  Hopefully, next time I'll be a little better prepared for the wind, rain, and worms!