Barbados Hurricane 2021

That we experienced Hurricane Elsa in Barbados in 2021 was pure chance or luck, although of course there can be no talk of luck. In fact, this natural event is just one of three that we experienced here last year.

When I plan a trip, I always look at certain key details beforehand. This includes the weather and natural events like hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis. A quick look on the internet shows me that the last hurricane to hit Barbados was over 65 years ago. There are also only very minor earthquakes here, and therefore no tsunamis. Volcanoes, well, there aren't any on the island anyway. Barbados is not volcanic. The annual temperature, at 27-33 degrees Celsius, is super pleasant year-round. Excellent, that works for us, and our pro and con list looks pretty weak on the con side. (A few points are still on it, like family and friends, whom we have to leave at home for cost reasons =()

La Soufrière volcanic eruption – 04/09/2021

The Easter Bunny has just hopped away again, and on a Friday afternoon, shortly after work, we stroll towards the beach. We reach it after a two-minute walk; the paths here in Barbados are usually short. Our destination, however, is the supermarket, which we conveniently reach by crossing a short stretch of beach. The alternative would be the highway, which would drastically reduce the fun factor, of course.

It's 5:30 and the sun is slowly setting. But somehow we can't see it. Strange. Dark clouds are coming from the west, directly towards us. A thunderstorm, a Barbados hurricane? No, they don't exist here. A thunderstorm wouldn't come from the west, as the wind here ALWAYS blows from the east.

Tip 1

If you feel the wind at your back and the cloud is still coming at you from the front, then something is rotten.

We're filming everything obediently and making our little jokes, while to our right the world seems to be ending and to our left there's a brilliant blue sky. Paradise, as always. The kids splash around in the water a bit longer, then we're off again. A person, we'll call him the turtle man, since he sells cute turtle necklaces, comes towards us and says, „Wow, did you see the ash cloud?“. Um... no, or maybe yes? The ones back there? An ash cloud in Barbados?

We haven't watched the news or read a newspaper in years. But our warning app hasn't sounded an alarm yet. And it's actually reliable. So, onward to the supermarket. We buy two apples and a liter of milk and stroll back home.

Tip 2

If someone asks you if you saw the ash cloud, you don't just buy a liter of milk!

Tip 3

It could be helpful to do a quick Google search, at least at home, to see if perhaps a volcano in the area has become a little restless.

But we'll eat first and put the kids to bed so we can start our work on time. A few moths, which aren't usually there, are fluttering against the windowpane. Besides, after 5 minutes the pane looks like sh*t and we briefly grumble „stupid critters“ into the room about it.

Then the ash cloud comes to mind again. I'll pop out onto our balcony for a moment and see a very light „layer of Saharan sand“. Oh well, let's bring the swimsuits inside. Can't hurt.

We're going to bed, the world seems to be submerged in sand, as it sometimes is when air comes from Africa. We know it from Germany and Switzerland.

We taught our kids from a young age that we get up when it's light and go to bed when it's dark. This works great in Switzerland, but here in the Caribbean, it means getting up at 6:00 AM and going to bed around 6:00 PM. That's how it is at the equator. However, the next morning, we don't get up at 6 or 7 AM. It's 8 AM, and we look outside. It's still kind of dark. The colors in the surroundings have also disappeared somehow. Barbados has become pale overnight. The green is gray, and the sky even more so. Everything is reminiscent of a total solar eclipse. At that point, however, we couldn't guess that this solar eclipse would last for a whole two days.

Ash cloud in Barbados

By Saturday, everything is already covered in about half a centimeter of ash. Our balcony has dark gray tiles instead of light gray, the pool has black water, and the sky is also dark gray. Not a trace of sun. Do you remember the wind coming from the east? Not at 10,000 meters, there it blows towards the east, so it's virtually coming from the west. The ash is falling down behind Barbados, and the easterly wind is blowing it evenly across the island.

The shops have now been closed for two days, and we're being frugal with our two apples and the liter of milk. We haven't left the house for a full five days now. This is a real lockdown, voluntary, because the ash burns in our eyes and throats; it's toxic due to its sulfur content. For the first time, the mask makes sense, and thank God everyone here now has plenty of masks. Thanks, Corona! You did a good job.

We are told that the last volcanic eruption was in the late seventies. Many people died here at that time. This time there were no fatalities, as everyone was protected by masks.

For two months, heavy traces of ash were visible here. Thanks to the next two events, however, the island is sparkling clean again.

Brief conclusion: For us, this was an adventurous experience. Our oldest can say that school was canceled due to a volcanic eruption, and we learned a lot about the topic. We did experiments at home to simulate a volcano and spent a cozy 5 days. Thanks to the nice families here in the same house, we never got bored.

Freak Storm Barbados – 06/16/2021

It was a mild summer evening, on a Wednesday, sometime in mid-June. The Barbados hurricane season always starts in early June, and it's still here despite the lack of hurricanes. It runs from June to September. Like most evenings, we work when the kids are in bed. It often cools down in the evenings to a wintery 27 degrees. That's really pleasant because, of course, we've gotten used to the temperatures by now.

I'll leave the office around 11:30 PM and head to the bedroom, one room over 😉 Everything is quiet, for now.

Around 2:30 I wake up (Swiss German for „I wake up“). It seems like someone left the light on, inside and outside! Huh???

The noise level is severe and it's daylight. Strange things seem to be happening outside. There's no hurricane reported, and they announce them a few days in advance, thankfully. But what's going on?

It's thundering and lightning like the heavens have opened (there's a saying for that, isn't there?). I pull out my mobile phone and film towards the outside. It feels so real, like I'm right in the middle of it all, not just watching. A shiver runs down my spine and my feet are getting wet, I think to myself. Then I realize I'm standing in a huge puddle. The water isn't running down my back, but it's seeping under the front door. The wind is fierce and the water is lashing against our door. My wife and child are now awake, scared, and standing there trembling next to me.

A perfectly normal summer thunderstorm

„That's completely harmless and probably happens here every other night now,“ I try to calm her. After all, I believe that myself. It's the first real storm we're experiencing here, but not a Barbados hurricane. However, that should change soon. 🙂

The next day we find out that it 460 flashes per Minute and that rained down on us. We live in a very modern building here, where we are always safe. The storm was the fiercest thing I had ever experienced up to that point. After two hours it was over and everyone went back to bed. A river ran past our house outside; otherwise, everything was back to normal.

The next day, I went to the hairdresser, and the storm was obviously the main topic. My hairdresser, around 35 years old, told me he had never experienced anything like it. The official report states that there hasn't been a storm like this in 35 years. A freak storm, by the way, is a storm that forms so quickly that you can't predict it. It appears out of nowhere within minutes.

Thankfully, we haven't had another storm like that over the summer. And no, these storms are absolutely not typical for Barbados. They are for most other Caribbean islands, however.

For a short while, we are happy that the island is now free of ash. The restaurants are grateful, as most of them struggled with everything always being dirty, covered in ash, almost like in a pub back in the day =)

Barbados Hurricane Elsa - 07/02/2021

After the ashes and the freak storm, what else can happen now? It was a mild summer evening... okay, it's always mild summer evenings here =) Actually, it was a mild summer morning, because although a tropical storm was predicted for Thursday night into Friday, and it did thunder for a few minutes, not much happened. The storm never came.

But our warning app told us in the morning that the storm was only two hours away from Barbados. In the local dialect, I think to myself, „Half so wild.“ We glance outside and see sandbags lying around everywhere. I call into the kitchen, „Hey everyone, look, someone forgot their sandbags outside!“.

Insight Sandbags have their purpose! We know them from Hawaii, after all, and at that time one was at our door. It actually held the water back.

The sandbags and our experience with the ash cloud meant that we quickly drove to the supermarket and stocked up on groceries. With a full shopping cart, we sprinted towards the checkout. STOP! Does it really make sense to buy so much meat and frozen food? Maybe we won't have any electricity? Just like always when lightning strikes somewhere.

Correct, we'll bring everything back and buy cans, tuna in all varieties, more fruits and vegetables we can eat raw. And batteries! Lots of batteries! There are 16 of the really big, fat ones. I can never remember what they're called. But our lamp eats 8 of them and is then ready for a whole day. You can even charge your phone with it, twice! Top-notch.

Back at the apartment, it doesn't take 15 minutes for the tropical storm to turn into Hurricane Elsa in Barbados and hit us about an hour later. The power goes out after 2 minutes. We're happy with our canned goods, but the freezer is full of food anyway.

Barbados Hurricane - Rather unspectacular

The Barbados hurricane itself was rather unspectacular. No thunderstorms, a bit of rain and wind, but less strong than what we’re used to in Europe. The continuity of the wind and the rather light, unprepared construction style, especially of the infrastructure, caused a lot of damage here on the island. Thankfully, there were no deaths, but we noticed some buildings and houses were missing when we drove across the island two days later. They were simply completely gone. The majority of our favorite restaurant in the north of the island was gone. It’s located on a cliff, beautiful, but the furnishings and half the roof were simply blown into the sea. Gone!

The next day, we still had no power. I drove to the gas station and bought a few bags of ice for the freezer. That lasted another day, but on Sunday morning, we had a huge puddle in our kitchen. The ice had melted, both the ice in the bags and the ice from our ice maker in the refrigerator.

The second night was unbearable. The bed was soaking wet because all 4 of us slept in the same bed and it felt like 35 degrees Celsius in the apartment. No electricity means no air conditioning, damn physics 🙂

We go out in the middle of the night for a few minutes to cool off, but we get eaten alive by mosquitos. Opening the windows unfortunately has the exact same result, so it's better to always keep everything closed here. Fresh air always comes into the apartment through the air conditioning. We have three super air conditioners here, which are completely useless to us right now.

Moving into the hotel

After the second sauna night and also due to the fact that there is still no electricity on Sunday afternoon and we want to start working soon, we book a hotel in the south. They have a power generator there, and we pack our things and move there. For a day or two or three. We don't know yet and will depend on the electricity.

On the way there, we see why the power is out. Almost all of the power lines in our town have been knocked down by trees. A total of 200 power poles on the entire island are affected. The Prime Minister is flying in workers from neighboring islands that were not affected by the hurricane. We were without power for 4 days, and in some areas of the island, it was up to 14 days. After 2 days, we already had to throw away all the food from the freezer and refrigerator. Without electricity, you can't cook anything either.

We are enjoying the privilege of simply being able to go to a hotel and stay for two nights until the power came back on Tuesday. The wait by the hotel pool and in the fine restaurants around it is pleasant, and the kids are having fun while we can work. Our customers don't notice the Barbados hurricane at all. Our emergency plan is working 🙂

Conclusion

Until April 2021, the outlook for Barbados was as follows:

• Last ash cloud 1979
• Last Freak Storm 1985
• Last Hurricane in Barbados 1956

This all now goes back to the year 2021. We, who right now (October 2021) one year are on the island, so we managed to see everything in a short amount of time. We were only affected on the fringes. The locals, some of whom live in old fishermen's huts, were worse off.

However, I must give the government credit for one thing here. Those locals who were uninsured received so much money from the government that they were able to rebuild their homes. The Prime Minister, who has been in office since 2018, has been working for the people ever since and has been providing support wherever possible with donations of water, food, and clothing. Not only after the Barbados hurricane, but for instance, during the homeschooling period in February 2021, people who couldn't afford it were given free internet and a laptop.

All vacationers who want to relax here for a few weeks don't need to worry. For now, there will be peace in paradise for a few years. It should only be in Year 2055 go crazy again with a freak storm =)

Here are a few impressions of the ash cloud in Barbados and the Barbados hurricane. Unfortunately, less than planned. I dived too deep while snorkeling, which my phone didn't like at all. Sh*t happens.