Typhoon Guchol

Well we can say we made it through our first typhoon here in Japan! Fortunately with the base's advance warning system we had a couple days to prepare for the storm before it arrived. We made sure to have plenty of supplies on hand...flashlights, bottled water, food, radio, batteries, etc. It wasn't clear if Tim would be home with us or not or if the ship was getting underway but in the end, everyone was required to spend the night on the ship so they could all be accounted for and ready at work the next morning.

I went about my day, ran a few errands on base in the morning, filled the car up with gas and returned home by noon. By 3pm, the base was shut down and Zoe and I hunkered down for the night. The rain started first and by 6pm we had 45 knot winds gusting. I had already closed all of the storm shutters on the windows and doors so we although we couldn't see what was going on outside we could hear everything!

The worst of the storm hit between 10pm-3am. We lost power but had plenty of candles even though I didn't light any and instead wanted to try and sleep. The wind was the most powerful I had ever felt. When a gust of wind would hit the house (every couple of seconds) it would shake the house. Eventually I moved from the bedroom upstairs to a room downstairs because the bed was shaking so much it practically moved to the middle of the room. Even though the storm shutters were closed the windows squealed like a teapot from all of the wind and at times sounded like they were going to burst.

Eventually, Zoe and I fell asleep and at some point through out the night the power came back on. We woke around 8am to find our front yard in little disarray, a few pots tipped over, etc. However the neighborhood was as usual, the school bus picking up kids on the corner, the neighbor across the street on his moped leaving for work and the woman down the street walking her dog at the usual time. We were relieved the storm wasn't as bad as predicted and now we know our house can withstand that strong of a storm. Typhoon season in Japan lasts until the beginning of the fall so I'm sure we will have a few more to deal with in the months to come.