Okinawa Photographer - the fun after Typhoon Songda

Typhoon

The window and doors are boarded.

Outside, the typhoon was banging it's fury 

like my drunken father locked out of the house. 

Inside, my brother and sisters joined me 

around a camp fire of candles.

The typhoon toppled an electrical post.

It howled; it hurled matter into matter.

We heard the thrashing flight of sheet iron,

the crack of branches splitting from the trees.

The house shook, and we huddled

in the near-darkness, as if cowering back into the primitive.

We told stories while bending near the candles,

collecting the stalactites of wax

we later fed to the flames.

We talked about the neighborhood children,

earlier covering the ground with chalk-drawings of suns,

birds caught between two skies. 

And yet the rain fell anyway, the suns vanished in the downpour.

My sister told us about orphans in nunneries,

so underfed they ate worms, 

bathed so infrequently that truffles grew between their toes

and pigs followed them where ever they went.

And there was a lake in the province, we collected, hidden

by woodland in the east, opposite high rocks

from where we dove into the ethereal silence of the water.

Then sudden crash reverberated from the house's swollen blackness,

distinct from the storm. It continued fro some time,

not without trying to stifle itself like a whisper.

I called for my parents,

though unknown to me, in that dark chamber of the house,

while the world outside was seemingly coming to an end.

by Joseph O. Legaspi

Daily Snaps-

Hello Everyone,

It's the day after Typhoon Songda visited our beautiful home of Okinawa, Japan. We were very lucky that Typhoon Songda had weakened from a Super Typhoon to a Catagory 1. We prepared to hunkering down incase we lost power. Approx 22 hours ago the first band of the storm arrived. An hour after that the wind started to pick up and the sky opened up. At that time the base declared a TCCOR 1E where everyone is on lock down. OMgosh the wind was wicked. The trees in our back yard were dancing and bending in half. Debris kept hitting the front door and it kept shaking like it wanted to open. To my relief KB called to see how we were weathering the storm. It would have been great to have him home but It was comforting to hear his voice and for him to say it was going to be alright. After being reassure by his call I stayed up for a bit and watched the trees dance. Once we lost power I decided I needed to go to bed since I figured there would be some cleaning up in the morning. Needless to say I did not expect this with a CAT1 storm. 

Below are my SOOC photographs.

These are snapshot of my front yard and of Typhoon Trio. 

We are very blessed that this storm did not hit us as a CAT 5. Even though the homes here on Okinawa are made out of concrete to with stand strong storms. I would not want to experience nature's fury...

Have a wonderful day!


UPDATE at 8:30 pm 
The strongest winds observed on Okinawa were sustained at 109 knots with 136 knots gust via Kadena Weather. That makes it a strong CAT2 to a CAT3 Typhoon.  http://weather.kadenaforcesupport.com/update/tcir.ht
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