Hurricane Irma - September 9, 2017

The outer bands of Irma came through starting at 1am with wind, rain, and lightening. The storm was not outside of a typical storm in Oklahoma City. We were very lucky because we didn't take a direct hit like Hurricane Matthew the year before. Cuba and Puerto Rico took most of the force away from the Bahamas.

We were worried about storm surge and flooding. Mr. Delancy predicted correctly and none of that was an issue. We did lose power as the storm came through. And it came back on at 4 am briefly. By 11 am, we had our power back. We checked and the storm had fully passed the Bahamas. We were in the clear!

The airport announced that it will be open for limited operations on Sunday, which was the day we were supposed to leave. I called American and found out there were no flights that day. We decided to keep our Tuesday flight, as Monday would have been standby.

It was time to explore. The ocean was angry and the wind was whipping the sand all around us. A hat was no protection for the sand. We found one shell and headed back quickly. After much debate, we decided to head over to the other side of the island and stay at the British Colonial Hilton. There's more food options and we were hoping for some fun before it was time to leave. Surprisingly, the Hilton had space for us. Originally, we were going to stay there on September 9th but with the Hurricane, I decided to cancel that reservation.

The rest of the night, we ate, played yahtzee, watched the storm out to sea and watched tv. We never really unpacked, so we were ready to head to the Hilton the next day.  When we were packing for the trip, Ryan never thought that Hurricane Irma would come and mess up our trip. For a good amount of time, the storm was a category 5. An F5 tornado is the largest recorded tornado. His insight in packing was impressive.