Tropical storms – cyclones, hurricanes, typhoons – are elaborate mechanisms by which heat energy is transferred from the tropics to the northern latitudes. Puerto Rico is under threat from hurricanes each season. In fact, the word hurricane is derived from ‘huracan’, a Taino and Carib (West Indies natives) storm god. The Spanish modified the word to hurricane, and it is now used to describe Atlantic and Eastern Pacific storms that meet hurricane criteria.

Historically, Puerto Rico has suffered damage from hurricanes, notably Betsy in 1956 and Hugo, in 1989. Betsy destroyed 15,000 homes in Puerto Rico and caused 16 deaths. Both Betsy and Hugo started as tropical waves off the African Coast. Puerto Rico has been spared in recent years, although it has had several close calls, in particular Gonzalo in 2014.

The 2015 tropical storm season will probably be considered relatively quiet as no major storms struck the US mainland. Tropical waves and depressions formed but strong winds aloft created shearing forces which prevented storm formation. These shearing winds are a feature of El Nino events, and explain in part why hurricane activity diminishes during El Ninos, a condition we’re in right now. The winds counteract the effects of warmer than usual surface waters which act to promote storm formation by providing energy to the developing storm. By the way, the information I present here has been distilled from the excellent blog entries of Dr. Jeff Masters, of the Weather Undergound, at www.wunderground.com. Refer to his entries for detailed and lucid explanations of these complex events.

Map showing surface temperature excursions during September, 2015. Note especially the warm temperatures (indicated by shades of red) in the Atlantic off Florida, the Pacific off Mexico, and the Arabian Sea.

To think the 2015 hurricane season was uneventful represents a mainland-centric and thus skewed version of this season’s meteorology. There were in fact several remarkable weather events this season. Hurricane Fred struck the Cape Verde islands, close to the coast of Africa, at the end of August. The last time that occurred was in 1892. The islands (now more properly known as the Republic of Cabo Verde) are desert like, with average annual rainfall of about 10 inches. Fred delivered about that much rain in a day, thus causing extensive flooding.

The shearing winds died down in late September and Tropical Storm Joaquin grew explosively into a Category 3 hurricane. From the very beginning, Joaquin was unusual. Eighty-five per cent of strong Atlantic hurricanes originate with low pressure waves off of Africa – Joaquin did not. Joaquin apparently started as a wave off the South Carolina coast that established a warm-core tropical cyclone northeast of the Leeward Islands. This area is normally too far north and therefore too cold to produce strong tropical cyclones. This year, the warmer than normal surface water temperatures (see the temperature figure, above) allowed for storm development.

And it is not just surface water temperatures that are important. The cyclonic winds churn the waters and cause surface waters to sink, and deeper waters (perhaps to 50 meters in depth) to come to the surface. Since these deeper waters are now as warm as the surface, a brewing storm gains energy, allowing it to intensify.

Hurricane Joaquin, October 2, as photographed from the International Space Station. The lights at the top of the image are Miami and Miami Beach.

Joaquin intensified rapidly, going from a Category 1 storm (85 mph sustained winds) to a Category 3 (115 mph) in only six hours. The day before (Tuesday, September 29), the top winds were only 70 mph. Joaquin thus became the second major hurricane of the season (Danny was the first), unusual for a strong El Nino year. By October 3, Joaquin had grown into a Category 5 storm, also unusual in an El Nino year.

The rapid intensification led to a tragedy related to Puerto Rico. The container ship El Faro left Jacksonville early in the morning of September 30, on her way to San Juan. At that time, Joaquin was a tropical storm, with top winds of 70 mph, expected to grow in to a minimal Category 1 storm centered in the Bahamas. El Faro’s course would take it with 200 miles of Joaquin, with expected winds of 35 mph and 10 feet seas. Joaquin intensified rapidly and the El Faro, for some reason without power, found herself, in the morning of October 1, right in the northwest eyewall. The El Faro sank with all hands (28 Americans and 5 Poles); the Coast Guard yesterday (October 30) located her hull and hopes to retrieve her data recorder soon.

Joaquin contributed to, but did not cause, exceptionally heavy rainfalls- 20 inches or more in a 2 to 3 day period – and consequent severe flooding in South Carolina. These rains actually resulted from a Nor’easter fed by copious amount of moisture from the warm off shore waters.

On Tuesday, October 20, Tropical Depression 20-E formed in the Pacific, 445 miles east-southeast of Acapulco, Mexico, under conditions of light wind shear, warm waters (86 F) and a moist atmosphere. While poorly organized at first, TD-20-E was in ideal circumstances for rapid intensification. This in fact happened. TD-20-E morphed into Hurricane Patricia and became the fastest intensifying Western Hemisphere hurricane ever observed. Her central pressure was 980 mb (mb -millibar – a unit of atmospheric pressure. Typical atmosphere pressure is about 1,000 mb) at 5 am Thursday, October 22, and 880 mb 24 hours later – an astonishing drop of 100 mb in one day. Her winds intensified by 100 mph in 24 hours, from tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane. By the next day, Patricia’s pressure was measured at 879 mb, with sustained winds of 200 mph, maintained for twelve hours. This was the lowest pressure ever observed in an Eastern Pacific hurricane, and also the highest reliably measured wind speeds for a tropical cyclone anywhere on earth.

MODIS satellite image of Hurricane Patricia, October 22. Patricia was a Category 4 storm at that time.

Fortunately, Patricia struck the Mexican Pacific coast in a rugged, relatively unpopulated area and dissipated its energy in the mountains of Central Mexico. As a tropical depression, she carried moisture into Texas and added to an already wet month. In fact, the Dallas – Fort Worth area recorded one of the wettest Octobers on record, with over 20 inches of rain. Remnants of Patricia were sufficiently strong so as to generate strong wind warnings and heavy rains in Upstate New York, and cause wind-related delays at Newark and other east coast airports as late as October 27 and 28.

As I write this (November 1), another very rare event is occurring – a Category 4 tropical storm in the Arabian Sea, heading for the Yemen coast. Tropical Cyclone Chapala, the second strongest storm on record for the Arabian Sea, is a rare event because the Arabian Sea is small, with a short tropical storm season, May – early June, and then late October through November, on either end of the Southwest Monsoon. Furthermore, typically high wind shears and dry air from the Middle East deserts hinder storm formation. Tropical Cyclone Chapala will be only the third cyclone to hit Yemen since the 1960s.Coastal Yemen typically gets about two inches of rain per year. Even the mountains there get only about 10 inches per year. Chapala will likely deliver several years’ worth of rain in a short time. Destructive flooding is a distinct possibility. If landfall is near the mouth of the Gulf of Aden, as expected, maritime commerce (400 ships per day pass through the Gulf of Aden) will be affected.

Tropical Cyclone Chapala nearing Yemen, October 31, 2015.

Quiet year in the Atlantic? I don’t think so. Consider:
• Hurricane Fred striking the Cape Verde islands.
• Two strong hurricanes in the Atlantic (Danny and Joaquin), rare for an El Nino year.
• The strange genesis of Hurricane Joaquin, near the Leeward Islands, and its rapid intensification to a Category 5 storm, again rare for an El Nino year.
• The huge rainfall event in South Carolina, and
• The exceptional rainfall totals in Texas, both in May and again in October.

Add to that the rapid intensification of and amazingly powerful Hurricane Patricia and the most unusual Tropical Cyclone Chapala. And did I mention the unusually large number of hurricanes near Hawaii this year? Or the very active Pacific typhoon season? The record heat in South Africa? The drought-induced wildfires in Indonesia, and the US west?

Last February, during a cold spell in Washington, James Imhofe, Republican from Oklahoma, tossed a snowball onto the floor of the US Senate and offered it as part of his case for why global warming is a hoax. Imhofe is the author of the book The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.

I would have to believe, if Senator Imhofe were to read this blog entry, even he would be impressed. Probably not. I suspect Senator Imhofe suffers from epistemic closure: one who lives in a bubble into which inconvenient facts can’t penetrate.

I think it was Mark Twain who wrote “Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”

Notes: As noted in the text, most of the information here has been taken from Dr. Jeff Master’s blog entries on www.wunderground.com.

The three storms in the top image are three named storms in the Pacific -Kilo, Ignacio and Jimena, in August 2015. Three named storms at one time is unusual.

March 31, 2015 

It is April, 1797. The British are at the gates of San Juan. They are led by General Ralph Abercromby (sometimes spelled Abercrombie), the hero of the invasion of Trinidad. Things look bleak for the defenders. It will take a miracle to repel the invaders.

Spain had until recently been an ally of the British, but was defeated by the French in War of the Pyrenees, in 1795. The Peace of Basel, which ended that war, led, in 1796, to an alliance between France and Spain, and thus a state of war with England. France, after the French revolution of 1792, had been fighting the so-called French Revolutionary Wars, which pitted the French and allies against the European monarchies. The wars took on a global character as the wars continued. As had often been the case, the Antilles, Leeward and Windward Islands became pawns in the broader European struggles.

Arercromby was the military commander of the British forces in the West Indies. He had begun his military career in 1756, as an officer with the Third Dragoon Guards, serving in Europe during the Seven Years War. While there, he was able to study the tactics of Frederick the Great, studies which served him well in his career. By 1781, he had become colonel of the King’s Irish Infantry. Dissatisfied with his government’s treatment of the American colonists, he retired, at half pay, and became a Member of Parliament, representing his district of Clackmannanshire.

Abercromby was recalled to active duty when France declared war on England, in 1793. He served in the Netherlands, commanding a brigade under the Duke of York. He was wounded at Nijmegen and, after medical treatment, was appointed, in 1795, the commander of British forces in the West Indies. He began his Caribbean escapades by, in 1796, invading Grenada. This action was to put down a revolt by slaves and former French colonists, led by Julien Fedon, against British rule, which had been restored from the French under terms of the Treaty of Versailles, in 1783.

After a brief excursion to the Dutch settlements of Demerara and Essequibo in South America, the British West Indies forces turned their attention to Trinidad. Rear Admiral Henry Harvey was in command of a fleet of four sail of the line, several frigates and sloops, and transports carrying the invasion troops, commanded by Abercromby.

Trinidad had been a Spanish colony since the third voyage of Christopher Columbus, in 1498. The population was largely French, from Martinique. For whatever reason, Trinidad lagged behind other islands in adopting the plantation system, especially as compared to nearby Tobago and the larger Jamaica. It was, in 1797, defended by a naval force about the same size as the British invaders, with troops in fortified positions around the island. In particular, the Spanish naval forces included four ships of the line and one frigate: San Vincente (84 guns), Gallardo (74 guns), Arrogante (74 guns), San Damaso (74 guns), and Santa Cecilia (36 guns), under the command of Rear-Admiral Don Sebastian Ruiz de Apodaca.

Now, anybody with any military knowledge at all will agree that landing troops on a hostile shore is one of the most difficult tasks a military force can undertake. One need only recall the World War Two landings at Salerno, Omaha Beach, Tarawa and Iwo Jima to be reminded of that. It should also be noted that the Spanish were proficient at amphibious warfare, both on offense and defense. In fact, Spain, under Philip II, was the first European power to establish specialized troops trained in landing operations, complete with barges to land horse drawn artillery, and special row boats equipped with small cannon. The Spanish used their Royal Marines in the 1560s to recover Malta from the Ottoman Turks and, in 1583, in the Azores against an Anglo-French-Portuguese garrison.

The Spanish were no slouches on defense, either. In 1741, a smaller Spanish garrison repulsed a British invasion force of 24,000 men, 2,000 guns, and 186 ships, at Cartagena de Indias, in present day Colombia.

Rear Admiral Harvey and General Abercromby thus had every right to expect a robust Spanish defense of Trinidad. Harvey maneuvered his fleet to block the Spanish ships, and Abercromby’s forces scouted for potential landing sites. They were both surprised to see the Spanish ships begin to burn. The Spanish torched them, and in addition withdrew their forces from the fortified Caspar Grande battery. The next day, the 14^th Regiment of Foot occupied the island, without opposition, and on February 20, 1797, Governor Don Jose Maria Chacon surrendered the island to Abercromby without any effort at defense.

The British thus gained a new Crown Colony, with Spanish laws and a French speaking population. Of course, the Spanish might have known what they were doing. Trinidad never fully embraced the plantation n system, and grew slowly compared to other British possessions, in part because of a chronic labor shortage. At the time of abolition in the British colonies, in 1834, Trinidad had, according to her census, about 17,500 slaves, while Jamaica, twice the size of Trinidad, counted 370,000 slaves.

In any case, Harvey and Abercromby turned their attentions to Puerto Rico. The Puerto Ricans observed the British invaders off the northern coast on the morning of April 17, 1797. The Puerto Rican Governor, Brigadier General Ramón de Castro, called his military leaders together and they enacted their defensive plan, placing troop contingents at several points along the shore. The defenders were Puerto Rican militia, with no main force Spanish troops available. The British forces, which included German mercenaries, did manage to land, but the navy could not force their way into the harbor against the guns of Castillo San Felipe el Morro. The Spanish destroyed the San Antonio Bridge connecting Miramar to San Juan, on Friday April 21, and the British began their siege from the land. On April 24, Sergeant Francisco Diaz led a party of 70 men to attack a British battery. They forced 300 British soldiers to retreat and captured fourteen prisoners before they were forced back by a British counter attack.

Fighting, including artillery duels and infantry skirmishes, continued for the next several days and conditions within the walls of San Juan were getting desperate. Juan Bautista de Zengotita y Bengoa, the Bishop of San Juan, ordered Rogativa (prayer processions) to be conducted around the island asking for God’s help in defeating the British. On the night of April 30, the Bishop, and the women and children remaining in San Juan, conducted a Rogativa which, with torches and accompanied by church bells, wound its way through the streets of San Juan. According to long standing legend, Abercromby, watching from a ship off shore, thought the procession represented reinforcements from the interior of the island to San Juan. In any case, the British re-embarked their troops, set sail, and disappeared over the horizon. One of the largest invasions of Spanish territory in the New World was thus defeated by the Puerto Rican militia and, legend has it, the effects of a prayer procession.

What would the British do with a military leader who managed to conquer an undefended island and then leave his siege of San Juan at the sight of a prayer procession? Promote him, of course! Abercromby was promoted to Lieutenant General and appointed Commander in Chief of the forces in Ireland, and then Scotland. He travelled with the Duke of York to try to regain Egypt from France, and was wounded during the Battle of Alexandria, on March 21, 1801. He died seven days later.

I wonder if Gilbert and Sullivan had Abercromby in mind when they wrote of a Major General in their opera buffa, The Pirates of Penzance, in 1879.

I am the very model of a modern Major-General,
I’ve information vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical;
I’m very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical,
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical
About binomial theorem I’m teeming with a lot o’ news;
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.

In 1971, the New Zealand artist Lindsay Dean completed four bronze statues commemorating the prayer procession. They are located just inside the walls of Old San Juan, near the San Juan gate, in an area now known as the Plazuela de la Rogativa. It is said the artist buried toys under the statues in honor of his child, who died at an early age.

Apparently, in late April, San Juan stages a recreation of the siege, with participants in period uniforms. I’ve not seen that, as we head back up north before then.

The images in this post are all mine, doctored to varying degrees with Adobe Photoshop®.

March 19, 2015

San Juan hosted a professional ironman competition last Sunday. It was actually a half ironman – 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike ride, 13 or so mile run. It began with the swim in Laguna Condado, with transitions to bike and then run in Stadium Sixto Escobar. These are all close to my apartment so I spent the morning watching and taking pictures.

The swim began with groups entering the water at five minute intervals. The elite, professional athletes started first, at 6:50 am. I’m not sure of the criteria used to place competitors in subsequent starts, or waves as they are called. In any case, when I got there, most of the 1500 or so athletes had at least started their swim, and the professionals had completed theirs.

The swimmers were close to the end of the first leg when they came under Puentes Dos Hermanos.

It was a beautiful morning for a swim.

 A ramp had been placed in the lagoon, near the Caribe Hilton. The swimmers were helped up the ramp to begin their short run to the transition zone.

Volunteers in bright orange t-shirts helped the swimmers up the ramp.

The athletes next ran about a quarter of a mile, often in bare feet, to start the bike event. Note that they are wearing some kind of ankle bracelet. I suspect this is an electronic tag of some sort to help with timing the different legs of the event.

Athletes are running to start their bike event.

The athletes ran into the arena, usually used for soccer or track and field events, to get their bikes. It was closed to the public so I went to the exit. They had to reach a line outside the stadium before they could mount their bikes and start their ride. The route took them to Dorado and back, and traffic was controlled the whole way to allow them an unhindered ride.

The bikers rode out of the Park on Calle San Agustin on their way to Dorado and back.

At the completion of the bike ride, the athletes dismounted before a specified line, and ran with their bikes into the stadium. They then put on their running shoes and began the run, essentially three laps to Old San Juan and back.

The end of the bike ride.

These are the elite competitors, and they look comfortable starting the run.

The runners made three trips to and from Old San Juan, so there were runners going and coming along Avenida Munoz Rivera.

Runners going to and coming from Old San Juan.

The runners, after their third lap, entered a chute to the finish line. Here are some of the elite athletes finishing the event.

Runners nearing the finish line.

The winner, Igor somebody (I have to check) from Brazil finished the event in under four hours.

I have to wonder about the event’s name, though. I mean, it is here in San Juan. The Spanish word for iron is some form of ferro, from the Latin ferium. How about translating Ironman to Spanish, at least for this event? I propose FerroHombre. If you want something a little more genteel, how about FerroCaballero?  That even has a bit of poetry to it, don’t you think? I can see the t-shirts now.

If you want me to follow up on this, send a check for $10,000 or whatever you can afford, and I’ll get right on it.

.

February 28, 2015

 Wednesday February 25 was a record setting day in Old San Juan. Six large cruise ships were in port, and they brought 18,000 passengers to town. This is the most for any one day since records like this have been kept, at least according to El Dia, a Spanish language newspaper I try to read every morning. Four of the ships came in  early – between 6 and 7:30 am; the last two came in about 1 pm.

I was in Old San Juan in the morning and it was, as you can imagine, crowded. What do 18,000 visitors do? Well, they certainly visited the stores catering to tourists, and bought t-shirts. And they used the trolleys to get around the city and visit the two forts. And, if they were in Plaza d’Armes, they had the chance to learn the salsa.

Salsa party in Plaza d’Armes, February 25, 2015.

An agency promoting tourism in Puerto Rico had hired a salsa band, and an enthusiastic young woman was counting the rhythm and teaching the steps. In a short while, several people were in the Plaza, dancing the salsa, with varying degrees of proficiency.

They were joined by young people on stilts and in various costumes.

Salsa on stilts? Why not? These two made it look easy.

 Now, for me the idea of learning how to do the salsa is daunting enough. I suspect I would have injured myself severely had I attempted to learn while on stilts. But these two were having fun, and in an infectious way. Even I began to feel the rhythm.

I’m not sure what some of the other costumes were all about. Take, for instance, the distinguished gentleman’s head. Is this an important figure in Puerto Rican history? Perhaps it is meant to be Luis Munoz Rivera, a statesman who negotiated a degree of autonomy for Puerto Rico during the last few decades of Spanish rule. Or maybe he is a Baccardi, of the rum family. Or the owner of a coffee plantation. Whoever he is, he can do the salsa.

He can do the salsa, whoever he is.

 Finally, there were one or two dancers in brightly colored robes, wearing colorful effigies on their heads. I believe these are masks are called vejigante, and are a common feature of carnival parades in Ponce and Patillas and other towns along the Caribbean coast.

So, how do you deal with 18.000 tourists in one day? Teach them to salsa. It seemed to work on February 25.

March 7, 2015

We walked to the Plaza del Mercado in Santurce the other day, from Condado. We walked under the highway bridge carrying the highway Expreso Roman Baldorioty de Castro. That highway carries traffic to and from Old San Juan, in an east-west direction.

It is often the case that bridge walls serve as canvases for the local artists. The image below demonstrates the size of some of these works.

Art on bridge wall in Santurce, March 2015.

I like the running motif with the gaily colored shoes. I’m not sure what the head to the right is all about – is he an artist, looking for a space to show his talent?

I was particularly taken by a series of more or less black and white images to the right (downhill) from the purported artist. Our friend Thomas had seen a documentary about the artist, and said he was the same person who had created the iguanoid creature I wrote about in an earlier post (see Street Art I). Unfortunately, Thomas did not remember his/her name. Perhaps some reader can provide me that information.

In any case, here are four images of his (her?) work.

I cleaned up the images in Adobe Photoshop® by fiddling with the contrast, and removing what I took to be streaks caused by running paint. See for example the streak on the left leg on the last image – it extended a bit further down. In fact, here is the unretouched version for comparison.

What do you think?

By the way, the smiling shark is from a wall panel on Calle Canal as we walked up towards the Plaza del Mercado. I wonder if Shark Number 9 was the inspiration for Left Shark, of Super Bowl fame.

February 24, 2015

A left port yesterday morning. I saw her on the high seas from a fifteenth floor apartment in a building in Condado. We have had a series of high surf warnings, and so it is possible the ocean was a bit rough yesterday. If so, it did not seem to affect A – she moved through the water very smoothly, from what I could observe. She arrived in late December, and had been tied up at Pier 16 ever since, with little or no activity around her. I once noticed three or four crew members mopping the deck, and another time there was some kind of lift allowing the crew to work on a window from the dock.

A at sea, February 23, 2015.

I’m not sure where A was going. She was headed east, towards the US Virgin Islands, and the nearer Puerto Rican islands of Culebra and Vieques. Of course, she may have been heading to Casablanca, or Gibraltar. She did look spectacular in the morning sun.

A came back into port in the late afternoon – it was just a day trip. I watched her come into the harbor and then down the channel in back of our building. She, as before, did a 180 degree turn and backed down to Pier 16. Here are some images of A coming down the channel.

 Mr. Andrey Milinchenko, if you are reading this post, I must tell you how very disappointed I am in you. OK, so three months may have been too much to ask to use A – even though it has been sitting at the dock doing nothing. But a day trip – now that would have been nice. Some caviar and ice cold Stoli – think about it the next time you take her for a little spin.

For more information see my earlier post A Came into Port.

December 20, 2014

Santa Claus came to Parc Luis Munoz Rivera last Saturday. He arrived, not in a sleigh with reindeers, but rather atop an off-road vehicle. His vehicle was escorted by about fifty other jeeps, land rovers, and the like, most of which were equipped with sirens. As Santa approached, the sirens sounded like emergency vehicles responding to a ten alarm fire. I did not anticipate any of this and thus failed to get a picture of Santa sitting in his beach chair on top of a Land Rover.

Santa Claus in Parc Luis Munoz Rivera, December 2014. He is in front of the vehicle he rode in on.

Here are images of some of his escort vehicles.

Again, there were about fifty off-road vehicles, most of which had emergency sounding sirens at full volume.

I noticed, later in the afternoon, heavy traffic heading into Old San Juan, so much so that the buses were gummed up by being caught in the traffic. It was a beautiful night (what a surprise!) and so I decided to investigate.

Another beautiful late afternoon in Old San Juan.

I waited for a bus which, when it came, was standing room. We get caught in traffic before the bus terminal and so the driver let everyone off just below the Capitol. It was an easy walk to the waterfront in the new park, to the east of the piers in Old San Juan.

There were thousands of people there, and it was impossible to get close to the water’s edge. This was the night of the San Juan Yacht Club’s annual Christmas parade. About 100 yachts, all equipped with Christmas lights, lighted figures, and sound systems playing Christmas music, paraded down the channel from the marina, and then returned passing close the edge of the waterfront park. An announcer from the club described and named each boat as it passed a reviewing stand. While I could not understand a lot of what was said, I did hear him describe one yacht as having a theme of a Jurassic Park Christmas. I had to hold my camera over my head to try to get an image or two. This did not work very well, as the images below prove.

Two very poor images of the San Juan Yacht Club’s annual Christmas parade.

I was so disappointed with these poor results that I spent the rest of the night at the Douglas Pub. At least I got invited to their Christmas party.

The next night, Sunday, I walked across the bridge into Condado. I did not have my camera with me, which was a shame since there was a parade of decorated bicycles through the heart of that part of San Juan. Most of the bikes, mountain bikes and BMX types mostly, had Christmas lights strung along the frame. Some even had, I’m not sure how, lights intertwined within the spokes of the wheels. A few of the bikes were equipped with boom boxes playing Christmas music. The San Juan police motorcycle escort added to the ambience with their blue flashing lights.

There are Christmas lights and decorations all over San Juan. Last night, in Plaza d’Armes, the Marshalls store had dancers as their window display. I wonder what it is like to dance in a Christmas present costume. I bet it is hot. Here are some images from around the city.

Finally, Feliz Navidad and Happy Holidays to all who read this missive.

November 20, 2014

The Royal Navy was back in port, for an overnight visit. The HMS Argyll, a Type 23 frigate, was docked at Pier 1. The Argyll is a Duke Class frigate, with all 13 of the ships in the class named after Dukedoms. Three Type 23s have been sold to Chile so it is possible I’ll see a Chilean version at some point.

The HMS Argyll docked at Pier 1, San Juan, November 2014

The Type 23s were under design as the Falklands War occurred, and the original designs were modified based on lessons learned from that conflict. They were originally envisioned as anti-submarine ships, with towed sonars to locate the subs, and helicopters to destroy them. As originally designed, the frigates had no on-board air defense missiles – anti-air support was to have been supplied by fleet oilers accompanying the frigates while at sea. The frigates were redesigned to carry Viper missiles to protect against low-flying aircraft (i.e., Argentine Skyhawks) and anti-ship missiles like the Exocet.

This seems a good idea to me. If I were at sea, in a frigate, hunting submarines, I would not want some pukes on an oiler trying to protect me from Exocets. Way too much room for error. To illustrate the point: In March of this year, the Argyll accidentally launched a torpedo. Fortunately, it was unarmed and the incident caused more embarrassment than damage.

You would think firing torpedoes by accident is a rare occurrence, and it probably is. I know of one other instance. The Fletcher class destroyer, USS William D Porter fired a live torpedo at the new battleship, USS Iowa, in November 1943, during a live fire exercise. The Porter was escorting the Iowa to North Africa, and the battleship was carrying President Franklin D Roosevelt, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, the Chiefs of Staff and other dignitaries off to meet with Churchill and Stalin in Cairo and Teheran. Roosevelt, long an admirer of all things naval, asked to have his wheelchair pushed to the port side so he could observe the torpedo. His Secret Service agent, ever alert, pulled his pistol as a means to protect him, proving that agency’s troubles may not be as recent as we have been led to believe. The Iowa was able to increase speed; the torpedo passed astern and exploded harmlessly in her turbulent wake.

The Porter was ordered to Bermuda and the whole ships company arrested, thinking the torpedo may have been an assassination attempt. The investigation showed the firing was an accident, and the Porter was ordered to the Aleutians. While there, she managed to fire a live 5 inch shell, by accident of course, towards the base commander’s official residence.  Whenever she entered port, other Navy ships would signal her: “Don’t shoot. We’re Republicans.” Her short career came to an end when she was sunk by a kamikaze off Okinawa in June of 1945. Perhaps my Dad, on Okinawa at the time, heard of the sinking.

I would have thought one of more of the Dukes of Argyll would have been famous military commanders. That does not seem to be the case. The Duke of Argyll is traditionally associated with one of the most powerful noble Scottish clans, and the Duke is known by other titles, including Earl of Argyl, Earl Campbell and Cowall, Viscount Lochow and Glenyla, Lord Campbell, Lord Lorne, Lord Kintyre, Lord Inveraray, Mull, Mover and Tiry’, Baron Hamilton of Hameldon and Baron Sundridge. His son and heir is traditionally known as the Marquess of Kintyre and Lorne. None of these names, at least according to my cursory research on the topic, is associated with British military endeavors of any note.

Maybe the HMS Argyll was named after a famous British warship, like Jellicoe’s flagship at the Battle of Jutland, the Iron Duke, the namesake of another Type 23 frigate. The current HMS Argyll is the third ship to bear that name. The first, a ship of the line, was launched in 1722, and, after a short, undistinguished career, was sunk in 1748 as a breakwater. The second was launched in 1904, a Devonshire class armored cruiser, but sunk after running aground on Bell Rock in the foam and froth of the Firth of Forth.

Perhaps this is why the current HMS Argyll has not been modernized to the standards of some of her fellow Type 23s, and is therefore relegated to less demanding naval tasks. For example, on her current deployment, she is doing, with the assistance of the US Coast Guard, anti-narcotic patrols. According to the rather breathless Royal Navy press releases (what ever happened to British understatement?), complete with pictures, she has stopped two vessels and confiscated more than 20 million pounds (currency, not weight) worth of cocaine. She also, in September of this year, called at Baltimore to participate in the celebrations of the 200^th anniversary of the writing of The Star Spangled Banner.

The Baltimore port call shows the Royal Navy at its very best. What other of the world’s navies would send a ship to help celebrate a poem written to commemorate a defeat of her armed forces? That would be like the US sending an aircraft carrier to Tokyo to celebrate Pearl Harbor Day.

To be fair, the British did have a pretty good run in 1814. The end of the Napoleonic and the Peninsular Wars allowed the transfer of seasoned veterans to the North American theater. In August, under the command of General Robert Ross and Admiral Alexander Cochrane, the British unleashed their new strategy – attack in the Chesapeake region to relieve pressure on the outlying areas. The British came ashore in Benedict, Maryland, defeated a rapidly assembled American militia, and proceeded to march into and burn and loot Washington.

Ross and Cochrane next turned their attention to Baltimore. Cochrane led the ineffectual bombardment (rockets’ red glare, bombs bursting in air, and all that stuff) of Fort McHenry, while Ross was killed by American sharpshooters during the Battle of North Point, the failed land invasion of Baltimore. Ross’s body, preserved in a barrel of Jamaican rum, was eventually interred in Halifax, Nova Scotia. That was surely a waste of good rum – what were the British thinking?

The British embarked and retreated by sea, out the Chesapeake Bay, into the Atlantic, around Key West, into the Gulf of Mexico, and up the Mississippi River to New Orleans, where they were gobsmacked by Major General Andrew Jackson and the American forces there.

Cochrane once again led the naval forces, while Major General Edward Pakenham, brother-in-law to the Duke of Wellington, replaced Ross and commanded the British army.

There was apparently some tension between Cochrane and Pakenham. According to legend, Pakenham at one point asked for more help from the fleet. Cochrane refused, saying the troops had already received more than was needed, and that he (Cochrane) would put his sailors ashore if need be to make his point.

In the event, the British assault on the American fortifications was poorly executed. A flanking maneuver failed to arrive on time when the canal Cochrane’s sailors were digging collapsed. The assaulting troops forgot (!) the ladders and fascines needed to breach the earthen defensive works. Pakenham died of grapeshot wounds. The Americans held off the British, who eventually withdrew. In his eulogy of Pakenham, Wellington blamed Cochrane for the defeat at New Orleans.

In 1958, Jimmy Driftwood wrote The Battle of New Orleans, which was recorded by Johnny Horton and named Billboard’s best song of 1959. It is written from the perspective of a foot soldier, and some of the lyrics include:

We looked down the river and we seen the British come,
An there must have been a hundred of them beatin on the drum.
They stepped so high & they made their bugles ring,
We stood beside our cotton bails & didn’t say a thing.

So, the military failures of Cochrane and Ross, and then Pakenham, led to the creation of two iconic American songs.

Now that is something to celebrate.

For more information, see Wikipedia entries for HMS Argyll, Duke of Argyll, William D. Porter, General Robert Ross, Admiral Alexander Cochrane, Major General Edward Pakenham, Battle of New Orleans.

I find the Royal Navy site interesting and informative: http://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/

November 13, 2014

The winds have shifted. I’ve been here two weeks now, and the prevailing winds are now from the northeast, off the Atlantic. When I first arrived, the winds were from the south, from the Caribbean. The difference is palpable.

The northeast winds are of course the trade winds. If you think about these winds from a meteorological perspective, they are the prevailing pattern of easterly surface winds found in the tropics. They strengthen or weaken based of the status of the North Atlantic Oscillation, the fluctuations in air pressure over the Azores (relatively high) and Iceland (relatively low).

The trade winds typically weaken and move north in the summer. Sunsets in Florida are redder in the summer, less so in the winter. The opposite is true here –dust from North Africa carried by the trades cause this. Drought conditions in North Africa create more dust and more dramatic sunsets. My maternal grandmother, a New Englander born and bred, used to say, when she saw a red sunset:

                                                Red sky in the morning

                                                Sailors take warning.

                                                Red sky at night

                                                Sailors delight.

Perhaps she was thinking of trade winds and North African dust when she taught me this.

The trades of course carried the Europeans across the Atlantic in the Age of Discovery. The sailing ships – Portuguese caravels, Spanish galleons, French nefs, Dutch fregats, British men-o-war – sailed south along the Iberian Peninsula and along the North African coast. This was often the most difficult part of the journey – ships could be becalmed for days or weeks before moving far enough south to get to the zone of consistent winds. Once there, they scooted across the Atlantic, carrying their cargoes of guns and germs, and, later, slaves. They returned by means of the Gulf Stream and the anti-trades. Perhaps I’ll visit those topics in another letter.

Caribbean air is warmer, more humid, almost steamy, hazier than North Atlantic air. Convective storms are common, with sometimes spectacular lightning displays. Historically, the average daytime high temperatures in San Juan drop almost five degrees during November, as the trade winds take hold, and rise by about that much in April, when the trades move north, allowing the Caribbean air to once again dominate. I wonder if and how plant life here adapts to these, to us, subtle changes in humidity, temperature and day length. I do know there is one tree that flowers, a bright red showy flower, only in February. I’ll have to do some research on that, starting by trying to learn the name of the tree.

But wait, you say: The trades blow over an ocean – doesn’t the air mass get saturated with water vapor? There are, after all, rain forests in Puerto Rico, aren’t there? Why are there no convective storms, thunder, lightning, associated with the trades?

Great question. It turns out the trades have an inversion layer, at about 10,000 feet, that prevents clouds from rising to create convective storms. You can actually observe this. Note the cloud structure the next time you fly into San Juan. Observe the clouds over the sea. You’ll be at about 35,000 feet, and the clouds will look like popcorn, all capped at the height of the inversion layer. Scattered showers for sure, but no thunderstorms.

So, it seems the weather pattern here has shifted to winter mode, and at just about the same time Croghan, Syracuse, Utica, Rochester got their first snowfall.

Neat, eh?

The images show the effects of the nice clear air. They were taken from Punta Escambron, looking east, along Condado and beyond. The first starts right at the end of Condado and you can see, on the horizon to the left, all the way to Punta Cangrejos and, to the extreme left, Isla La Cancora,  beyond Isla Verde, almost to Pinones.

The second, at a different scale, shows the Condado Vanderbilt on the right. Last year, the two buildings were a salmon color –they’ve been repainted to the off white you see here. The Marriot, in central Condado, is a bit to the left, the square building with red letters on top. The salmon colored building to the left, in the last group of high rise buildings, is Condado del Mar, where we stayed on our second trip to Puerto Rico. Ocean Park is the area with no high rises; Isla Verde begins beyond that.

See the Wikipedia entry for Trade Winds for more information.