Pictures a/o 7am of the 1st part of Earl

You know the traits of a good reporter are stupidity, I mean bravery, don't you? Well, that's me (I won't say which). Me and my intrepid driver and co-photographer took off around 6:30am to check on our pal's boat in the marina (and to see what was going on out there). As it turned out, the worst hadn't hit us yet and most of our pictures were before the winds and rain really hit us around 7am, but nothing had been flooded yet and there wasn't a lot of damage at that point (if you don't know where anything is you can use this map to try to orient yourself). The Strip in S Frigate Bay is getting a bit beat up...The ocean doesn't look pretty, but the sea was actually worse. Do I think these are 100mph+ winds? No, but the gusts were increasing. Here's what everything looked like an hour ago:

Here's the storm right over us (you'll note the swirl behind Earl - sigh):



Here's what the sea looks like outside our place (the sea, not ocean).



Heading downtown. There were a couple of signs down, but I think their time had just come (it wasn't that windy).



The sea abuts the main street. Look how rough it is (again, that's the SEA). You gotta love Mikey taking a video in this crap (his camera is waterproof).



If you look at prior pictures from earlier posts, you can see how bad conditions are out there. The marina looks much better, but still has a lot of chop and a strong current. The lines were holding, but it's a good thing the little boat had fenders out...It was also a good thing it wasn't on the other side of the breakers.



During the last storm there were a few rock slides on Timothy Hill, so we went to see if that had happened again (not yet) and took a few pictures from above. The first one's the Marriott; the other is toward the Peninsula.



Then we wanted to see what the ocean side looked like so headed to N. Frigate Bay. That was rather ugly too and by now the winds were starting to come up more.



A trip over to S. Frigate Bay where The Strip is found conditions really starting to deteriorate. There's a little tree limb blocking the street.



A few signs at Mr. X's Shiggidy Shack torn up a bit or down, but everyone's structures were holding.



Here's the Sunset Cafe next door. Some signs were down, plants were knocked over, and the structure was leaning a bit.



The dock was holding despite its beating.



I thought this might have been on its way out with the skies lightening up, but they've darkened again and the gusts are definitely stronger. Sure wish it would poop itself out already. According to StormCarib Earl's at its closest point right now (71 miles away), so this should be it. I've definitely been in Nor'easters worse than what happened here (we still have windows open and didn't close our shutters), but feel for anyone who's been more adversely affected by this. Considering the higher winds have been going on for over an hour, things could look totally different than when we were out there. We took some videos but they'll take so long to upload that I'll put them in the next post. I just wanted to at least give you a clue as to what was happening up until now.

Michael headed down to the Peninsula, which will likely have taken the brunt of all of this, so will report back once he's seen what's going on there (and wiped the tears out of his eyes).