Tropical storm causes flooding and power cuts
By MINDELL SMALL,Guardian Staff Reportermindell@nasguard.com
Several Grand Bahama businesses could not open their doors Thursday because heavy thunderstorms from Tropical Storm Katrina triggered a power outage lasting nearly half a day.
The majority of residents on that island experienced a power cut around 2 a.m. Thursday and most areas were not restored until about 1 p.m. During the outage, many people still rushed to convenience stores and supermarkets, hoping to stock up on last-minute storm supplies. Some were turned away and told to come back when power was restored.
Freeport Power Company (FPC) said 75 per cent of the island was without electricity up to 1 p.m. Thursday. Cool 96.1 FM said even though power was restored to Lucaya and downtown Freeport, some areas in the city were still without light up to 5 p.m.
Wind gusts to 50 miles per hour reportedly slowed down FPC workmen who waited until the winds had died down before attempting to carry out repairs.
Forecaster Lee Marvin Johnson at Freeport Weather Office told The Guardian Thursday that Katrina also brought a lot of rain to Grand Bahama. He said on Wednesday, the total rainfall at Grand Bahama International Airport was 2.83 inches, and 3.73 inches on Thursday.
The storm, which slowed down while in the extreme Northwest Bahamas, had more time to dump rain in Grand Bahama, Abaco and Bimini than in New Providence and Eleuthera. New Providence reported 1.1 inches of rain on Wednesday and 1.75 inches Thursday.
In Eleuthera, an assistant to Ivan Ferguson, the local government administrator for Governor's Harbour, said the settlement received most of its rainfall on Wednesday but no flooding was reported.
Chief Councillor for Harbour Island, Daschiel Roberts, said the island also experienced heavy rains with some brisk winds. However, he said when he drove around the island on Thursday, there was no flooding.
Here in New Providence, there was a report of flooding at the Civil Aviation Section at Nassau's International Airport. An employee told The Guardian that flooding in that section was due to the heavy rain yesterday afternoon. The Airport's air traffic facility however, was not affected.
Despite this, many residents said Katrina's rains, which kept afternoon temperatures some 10 degrees lower than usual, were much needed.
The storm was mainly a rain event in The Bahamas but it managed to reach hurricane strength in the Florida straits yesterday afternoon before its eye made landfall over Ft. Lauderdale around 7:30 p.m. It was downgraded to a tropical storm again after its landfall.
Now, Katrina is continuing to break up over the Florida peninsula, but is expected to re-strengthen once it enters the Gulf of Mexico, somewhere near Ft. Myers.
At 6 p.m. Thursday, Katrina was centred near latitude 26.0 degrees north and longitude 80.0 degrees west, or 10 miles east of Ft Lauderdale and 180 miles west-northwest of Nassau.
It was moving west at about 6 miles per hour with maximum sustained winds near 75 miles per hour (minimal Category One Hurricane), gusting to 90 mph.
Katrina is the eleventh-named storm for the 2005 Atlantic Hurricane season. In August, U.S. weather experts predicted that there would be 18 to 21 tropical storms for the six-month long season, with seven to nine of them becoming hurricanes.
Chief Climate Officer at Nassau's Meteorological Department, Jeffrey Simmons said there were two other tropical systems in the Atlantic that the Department was watching.
He said there was a large tropical wave north of Hispaniola that was seemingly breaking up but was still being monitored closely.
Another system (low pressure area) is about 1000 miles east of the Lesser Antilles. That system is in an environment favourable for development into a tropical depression. If it becomes a tropical storm, it would be named Lee.
