Heavy rains drenching Curacao

[tropicana]

CURAÇAO -
THU NOV 18 2004
The Meteorological Department expects the showers to continue on Aruba, Bonmaire and Curacao for at least the next 24 hours. The local showers will be pretty heavy and accompanied by thunder and lightning. No records have been broken yet - 170 mm of rain in Banda'bou - but the rains did cause many problems.


In Curaçao, where up to this morning 61.8 mm of water was recorded at Hato within 24 hours, many streets were flooded, including Punda’s center.

There were many reports of fallen trees and a few ramshackle houses collapsed. Some schools such as Albert Schweitzer in Saliña announced on the radio for parents to pick up their kids from school if possible because the school was flooded. Many teachers couldn’t make it to school on time to open up the classes.

Bonaire recorded the highest amount of rainfall of the ABC-islands at 83.6 mm at the Flamingo Airport. Lt. Governor Herbert Domacassé had already closed down the schools as a precaution. "For safety reasons", he stated this morning during a press conference. If it continues to rain this way the schools will remain closed tomorrow as well. People are cautioned not to use the road from Kralendijk to Rincon.

In Aruba, where up to 8 this morning 18.4 mm of rainfall was recorded at Reina Beatrix, the Dienst Openbare Werken (DOW - Public Construction Department) closed off all the streets that were completely flooded. A work group was also set up, after the water overflow problems of hurricane Ivan, to develop a master plan for these problems.

-justin-

[msbee]

for some incredible pictures of the flooding in Bonaire, go to
http://www.bonairetalk.com/newsgroup/me ... 1100895496

scroll down the page until you see a listing of a video of Sabedco flood.
It is a large file, but worthwhile watching.
For those of you who don't know the ABC islands ( Curacao, Aruba, Bonaire), they are flat dry desert islands with little rainfall. I believe Bonaire had something like 8.5 inches rain in 30 hours.
Bonaire usually averages about 20 inches for the entire year.
some incredible weather!