Hurricane Ike About to Make Landfall in the Holguin Province of Cuba

http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/flt/t4/sloop-avn.html watch the loop...

Barring any last minute bobbles or wobbles of jogs Hurricane Ike is about to crash into the NW coast of the Island of Cuba. A place known as the Holguin Province which is one of the most populated areas there aside from Havana. It is the port that Christopher Columbus first sailed into on his voyage from the Bahamas.

Ike is a Category Three Hurricane packing winds of 120 mph and he is moving west towards landfall somewhere along this coastline. Any turn of the eye or wobble will make the difference as to what city will feel his full brunt but Cuba is now already feeling his fury as his southern side is scraping along already onland waiting for the eye to make it's official landfall. Either way... Cuba is getting Ike as the NHC predicted for the last 24 hours or more.

Sometime tonight he is expected to move wnw a bit and parallel the coastline or edge his way in just a bit and the Keys should get some tropical storm force winds from this if not more. Miami Weather radio insists we might have tropical storm conditions tomorrow and tomorrow night. We'll see.

It's a cautious game of trust we play with the NHC that their forecast verifies and we stay safe.

Something I want to put out there to think on is in a few weeks, a month or so this track will play out again as it has all summer and there will be cold fronts to the north that are stronger and the next storm may get pulled north by a cold front that isn't there today but may be there in a few weeks during the peak of the Season.

With this year's tracks our luck will not last too long unless something shuts down the tropical season and since I don't see El Nino racing to save the day... we are stuck in this pattern.

And, what a pattern it has been. One storm after another had made landfall from Texas to Maine. Dolly, Fay, Gustav and Ike all headed towards land.

Telling you when they made this hurricane season they must have been seeding vitamins to those waves coming off of Africa cause they are pumping iron and tenacious beyond words can describe.

I'm tired. Had a long day and am going to rest, stop posting and relax. I took a nice shower, relaxed, had dinner and turned the TV off. Listening to the Weather Radio a bit and then I'll put something else on while watching TWC on mute or watching Sunday night football.

I feel badly for our neighbors to the South who have bit hit every way they could be hit by storms this year. I hope some day to travel to Cuba and see it for myself not from a cruise ship passing by in a storm but up close and personal. I want to smell it's scents, hear it's music and dance to it's beat. My great-great grandparents went to Cuba and bought seed tobacco for the fine leaf tobacco they planted in Florida or for Cigarmakers or who knows...maybe they were running guns or raising monies for Jose Marti. There was a close relationship between the Jews of Key West and the Cuban Community many of who were from Jewish families who had coverted to Christianity during the Spanish Inquisition.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/Cuba.html

Jose Marti came to the island of Key West and spoke from a balcony on this building that once was a private home. My great-grandfather was there to witness history.



Jose Marti wrote on liberty, it is a battle that is still sadly being fought on the island of Cuba as the dream doesn't die and lives on in the hearts of men and women there who will one day see freedom from a regime that does not let them live their lives according to the value of liberty.

Jose Marti wrote..

* Liberty is the right of every man to be honest, to think and to speak without hypocrisy.

* Liberty the essence of life. Whatever is done without it is imperfect.

* Man loves liberty, even if he does not know that he loves it. He is driven by it and flees from where it does not exist.

And, yet Cuba is just 90 miles away across the Florida Straits and rain that falls in Key West this week will have come via spiraling bands that danced their way across the City of Havana longing to be free and to fall on American Soil just 90 miles away.

I was in Key West the day she made this video. I relaxed at Tom's and walked around other parts of town, went to Temple I think... when you are in Key West you can always feel Cuba and sense it in the breeze that races across the straits bringing with it air that graced Havana only 90 miles away. Cubans and Cuban food are all over Key West and it is part of it's culture just as much as it is American city at the end of the road known as US 1.



Besos... prayers to all in Ike's path and best wishes for everyone's happiness and health who is reading this blog and took the time to come into my world tonight.

Bobbi