First storm of the season ?

Well, the first that will directly affect us. Lots of storms and a few hurricanes but all well offshore. This has possibly the driest summer in the 10+ year I've been here. Hopefully this will dry out the surrounding farmland so more crops will be planted. We'll find out in the next few days.

From NOAA

Regardless of development, gusty winds and heavy rains causing flash floods and mud slides are expected in coastal portions of the Mexican states of Oaxaca, Guerrero, Michoacan, Colima, Jalisco and Nayarit this weekend into early next week. Interests in these areas and Baja California Sur should monitor the progress of this disturbance.

United States Embassy Mexico City
Security Message for U.S. Citizens:
Severe Weather in Mexico
September 3, 2016

The U.S. Embassy cautions U.S. citizens that severe weather is expected to bring gusty winds and very heavy rains to southwestern Mexico. Total rainfall amounts of 5 to 10 inches with isolated totals up to 15 inches are expected through the weekend into early next week over the southern Mexican states of Oaxaca, Guerrero, Michoacan, Colima, Jalisco, and Nayarit. These rains could result in life-threatening flash floods and mudslides.

It's pool time again

Nahima y mom

Water was nice

Or at least I made it so by putting up the pool again.  The fotos were today but Nahima even wanted to play in it yesterday with only a foot of water. Street water last night filled it about half way and I pumped a bunch out of the cistern in the morning.  2-3 young girls heard about it and they want to come over later.  Looks like my pool will be the center of attention for another summer.

About a month more until Eastern Pacific hurricane season starts which means anything can happen after that. The storm season drama will start then and in the mean time we'll enjoy the pool and hopefully for months after.

Rain and buggy bread

That really looks like rain to me but stick your head outside and it's a high overcast. What is over us now is not connected to Invest 98E further south which has a 90% chance of becoming a Tropical Storm latter today or tomorrow. The Eastern Pacific's last named storm was Ela but it ended up near Hawaii so we didn't notice it. Another storm using the letter D must have done the same thing. Guess that means this next storm will begin with an F.

According to the Weather Underground I am wrong about the names. There may be a Central Pacific area with a different set of names.

Tropical Depression Five-E formed Saturday morning and is currently located about 265 miles south-southeast of Acapulco, Mexico.

Tropical Depression Five-E is expected to strengthen into Tropical Storm Dolores possibly as soon as later Saturday and may strengthen into a hurricane next week.

On my last bread excursion I noticed little black specs in the wet flour and I picked them out as I saw them. Never saw any in the dry flour. Just in case this time I decided to sift the flour from a new bag and sifting is probably a good idea anyway. Sure enough at the bottom of each sift were 10 to 15 of these little critters and most were moving. Google "bugs in flour" and I found it's rather common and are called Weevils and Mites. They could have been in the flour at the store because I seem to remember a tiny flour leak when I bought them. 

On the other hand something was eating my Faba/Fava and Garbanzo/Guasanas beans a few months ago. I'd see little holes in the beans and powder in the bottom of the bag. Anything kept in plastic containers seems immune but plastic bags don't stop them.

My flour Mites

BTW - this try was another brick

Non Proactive CFE

It took me 3 weeks and mutiple tries to get CFE out to cut a mango tree that was growing around my power lines to the house. Has to be done twice a year because they won't cut the whole tree down that is almost growing in the street.

Ok so they miss my house or a few others because they are less important than the main power lines .... but they are ignoring the main lines as well.  After the Monday morning storm there were close to 30 CFE guys out with chain saws and machetes cleaning up the mess and making a mess. CFE never cleans up after.

So power went out about 5AM and it took them 'till after 10 to fix the problem.  Power back on for a 1/2 hour and out again until after 4PM while they cut many, many trees down to a safe level. Just for good measure they cut the power again about 6PM for 10 minutes. I went outside and bellowed my feelings at CFE and they may have actually heard me.

Main road mess - partly storm and partly CFE

Huge tree near my house

All machete work

Rain, rain, rain and no storm

Nothing coming in from the ocean but it still has been raining a little or a lot almost every day for the last 2 weeks. This is definitely the wettest Spring I have experienced here on the Jalisco coast. It's kind of a typical tropical with usual clearing mid-day followed by clouding up and rain in the evening.  Clouds usually forming over the mountains and then moving down to us.

It rained all last night, main road became a stream, lagoon backed up so we could see it and the puddles/lakes on the way to Melaque became a little deeper. Better by the 1pm school run but still got splash over my hood.   I have turned around in the past before getting into Melaque and saying ... "No school today"   They really need to get the road grader out to cover the larger holes because they only get deeper each rain

Just before the rain came in on the left (east)

Storms, Birthdays and CFE

.... and Ants. I started my day with ants who had made a nest in my coffee maker. I use this coffee maker every day so how they had time to get the queen in there and lay all those eggs I don't have a clue. I took it outside, sprayed it with bug kill and then turned the hose on it. Down to the store for a jar of Nescafe since I need my coffee and will give the machine a thorough cleaning later.

Night before last a large branch fell on the power lines to the house next to Lorena's. That left the neighbors with no power, a live wire in the street and Lorena's pole bend over at about a 45 degree angle. The owner of the rental who owns the only real store in town said it's the renters responsibility. After complaining to neighbors about the owner, trying a few local CFE numbers, Lorena finally asked me if I had an emergency number. I had the National number and after about 20 minutes of explaining and telling them where we lived, she said a crew was coming. Sure enough, as it was getting dark they showed up and even tied up the bent pole. Hugo is going to case it in cement another meter higher.

So yesterday was Nahima's third birthday with a cake from Bodega and homemade tamales. About 15 of us with kids in the pool and plenty of beer. I had told Lorena I was going to cut down my bananas and plant something else so they asked if we could cut a few leaves for wrapping the tamales. They had a limited amount of corn husks and wanted to make a lot.

Nahima's cake

Banana and corn wrapped tamales

My neighbor across the street is a fisherman and knows I get weather info from the Internet. The skies were looking real ominous last night and he was going out so he asked me about storms in the area. I told him about Manuel but that it won't be here until tonight or Sunday. It did rain last night but not much. So Manuel keeps moving north and it looks like lots of rain and maybe wind Sunday and Monday.

Manuel aiming right for us

Tropical Storm Lorena

My neighbor's name is Lorena and she and her husband got a big kick out of the possibility of this latest low pressure becoming a storm in her name. Won't become a hurricane probably but sure dumped a lot of rain last night. I don't think it's over yet even though it's a bit Northwest of us.

Sink holes in the rain

This isn't exactly new around here because I've had small ones before. This is from the heavy rain we had last night that I slept through. Someone reported nearly 4" and my pool did overflow from 3" below the rim. I'm afraid the dirt is inside my little French Drain cistern that should have been surrounded by rocks and gravel but wasn't. Another reason the hole is here is it's right below a roof drain. So, I'm going to fill this hole with rocks as soon as it stops raining.

Invest 95E just came by and is now north of us. Dropped a lot of rain even though it never became a storm. Now we have Invest 96E following right behind to wet us some more. Turning out to be a wet year. I'm off to fill the wheelbarrow with some big rocks.

Nearly a meter deep

Invest 96E

Invest 95E and 96E

First LOW of the Tropical Season

Well this one is right on time and the Tropical Weather season starts tomorrow on the Pacific. Seems like we had an even earlier one last year. When a storm is this young it's hard to tell which way it will head but speculation is West/NW and out to sea. It's been named Invest 90E and may become a storm by Thursday.

What is also interesting is the humidity has risen dramatically in the last week, overcast all day and the refreshing breezes we were experiencing have faded.

From this morning

From 2 this afternoon

New Year on the beach

I have 8 visitors down from Jocotepec and luckily we got our two perfect beach days in over the weekend on the west end in Melaque. Today the remains of a North Pacific storm just blew in and it has been raining since 10am. They are out checking out Barra de Navidad like tourists need to do since they are lucky to get to the beach once or twice a year.

Four adults, four kids and my neighbors family rented two tables with a shade umbrella. They had made up a lot of seviche so we just bought coke, beer and a few goodies from beach vendors. Lots of fun playing with the kids, dodging the diving pelicans who were after the sardines. Even fishermen in boats came in for the sardines with their throw nets. Haven't seen pelicans for almost 6 months. Ocean is starting to get chilly but still swimable. Next month it will probably be too cold for me.

Diving pelicans

Beach crowd from the water

Raspados (shaved ice) in the shape of a Xmas tree

He just had to do it

Caracoles (sea snails) the kids caught

They also caught some chocolapas (sand crabs)

Last rain of the year?

Hurricane season isn't over until the end of the month but last week we'd thought the rain was over. Suddenly this 'Invest' which now has a 50% chance of becoming a storm showed up giving us 48 hours of rain and very cool temperatures. Not at all unwelcome after the October heat which I believe was the warmest month of the year. A nice relaxing cool weekend.

We're gonna get wet

Well Bud has finally pulled himself together into a level one hurricane and is headed in our direction. Latest news is that it may reach level two for a short while before bouncing off the coast and weakening back to a tropical storm. The Weather Underground says we should expect rain and thunder storms thru Sunday, possibly starting today.

Throw a quick load in the laundry, maybe put a last coat of sealer on the new roof and off to Cihuatlan to stock up. We're due for rain but I hope we don't get enough for flooding ... and heavy winds we really don't need at all. First rain of the season always seems to knock the power out ... so better add a flashlight to my shopping list. Oh well, this is what we get here in the summer.

Beatriz means rain

The hurricane that wasn't ...

And rain is about all we got. Lots of excitment in anticipation because seldom does a storm point directly at us like Beatriz did. It did reach category one just offshore south of us but landfall must have taken all it's strength. It has rained two nights in a row and is still raining this morning. Even found a crab in the house indicating that the ground is pretty well saturated. We needed the rain ... and it's cool!

The remains of Beatriz is just sitting offshore about 220 miles promising rain for another day or two.