I woke up at 6 am because the wind was really loud. When I look out my window I can see a large tree across the parking lot. The wind was completely thrashing it around. I said a prayer and willed myself to go back to sleep, but I kept looking at the tree and getting nervous. The wind was just blowing a little and then every 2 minutes or so there would be a large gust that lasted for about 15-20 seconds. It was really strange. It was raining, but not super hard or anything. I decided to get up and get dressed just in case. I ate breakfast while trying to figure out where the typhoon was. I couldn't find any live doppler for the area and all of the weather reports were conflicting. Most of the news articles on Kompasu were at least a day old, so I didn't know which was accurate.
Here is my first attempt at uploading a video to my blog. It is the view from my veranda when the wind was bad, but not quite at it's worst: I have a video to put here, but can't seem to get it to load.
I decided to leave for work a little early in case it took me awhile to get there. I donned my raincoat and boots and grabbed my umbrella. By this time, the wind was barely blowing and it was raining lightly. I made it to school with plenty of time to spare, so I decided to stop at a bakery. As I was walking back to school from the bakery, a large wind gust turned my umbrella inside out and snapped the joints. Looks like I'll be buying a new umbrella!
So when I got to work, we weren't sure if the typhoon had already passed, or if it was just getting started. I recently signed up for safety alerts from the U.S. Embassy. This is part of the message I got yesterday:
This warden message is being issued to alert U.S. citizens residing or traveling in the Republic of Korea that the Korea Meteorological Administration has issued alerts for a Category 3 storm, Typhoon Kompasu. As of 1230 (local time) on Wednesday, September 1, Typhoon Kompasu was located approximately 263 kilometers or 163 miles southwest of Cheju island and traveling north at 33 km/h (20 mph). It is expected to turn in a northeast direction and pass very near Seoul at approximately 1500 (local time) on Thursday, September 2. The Korea Meteorological Administration reports that the maximum sustained wind speed in the storm is 157 km/h (98 mph). While Typhoon Kompasu’s winds are expected to decrease over the next 36 hours, sustained maximum winds when the storm reaches Seoul are still predicted to be as high as 150 Km/h (93 mph).So we were at working thinking "if the storm isn't supposed to come until 3pm, and what we just saw was the edge of the storm, it must be REALLY bad!" Turns out that at that point the storm was already over. It is extremely surprising how inaccurate the warning was. The message does say "local time," so we were not sure if that meant local time in America. It makes zero sense to send a message to Americans living in Korea and list the American time.
No classes were cancelled at our school and it ended up being a normal day. Another typoon is south of Korea and heading in a northerly direction, so I wonder if we will see any more action.
“If you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you'll never enjoy the sunshine.” -Morris West
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