6 months ago this morning, Category-5 #Hurricane #DORIAN, with winds of 160 knots (185 mph), made perfect, direct hit on Marsh Harbour in #Bahamas. I was there. This morning I’ll tweet like I would’ve in real time, if I’d still had connection to outside world. Check back here. 
11:30 am (01 Sep): In a school on a hill—hunkered down in solid-concrete classroom with 11 others, including toddlers. Radar says hurricane’s inner core is just about here. Winds getting nasty—trees coming down, stuff flying. Feel like I'm about to get on rollercoaster. 973.4 mb.
12:12 pm (01 Sep): Getting deep in cyclone's inner core. Wind coming in big, sweeping pulses—& getting worse. Roaring. Gusts hammering walls with force of dynamite. Watching it all through cracks in shutters on downwind side of room. 952.4 mb.
12:29 pm (01 Sep): Can’t see a damn thing—just pure whiteness, energy, roaring. Walls shuddering. Ears painful. Boards have blown off the windows, shutters are starting to cave in—we’re piling furniture against them. If they go, we are f*cked. 940.6 mb.
1:05 pm (01 Sep): The roar is dying down. Hazy sunshine coming through cracks in the shutters… It’s got to be the eye. Got to be. 919.2 mb & still falling.
1:12 pm (01 Sep): Outside in parking lot—in calm eye. Heavy damage to building. Cars thrown around, mutilated. Trees reduced to sticks. People wide-eyed, emotional. Woman chanting about the greatness of God. Stadium shape to the clouds. 922.2 mb & fluctuating.
1:50 pm (01 Sep): Eye square over us. Need to find new spot to ride out backside—school too smashed up. (So I’ve gotta pack up & stop collecting data—grrr.) 12 of us piling into 3 cars—may the universe protect us & get us to safety before those terrible winds return. 913.4 mb.
2:40 pm (01 Sep): Safely in government complex with hundreds of others. (This after short but unpleasant drive.) My friends & I crammed in supply closet. Back eyewall now raking town—wind SCREAMING—but impact glass & building's hugeness are protecting us.
From then, worst passed within about hour & half—but this was followed by days of rain & gales that added to misery of survivors who’d lost everything. (The storm just wouldn’t lift away.) Me: I lived in my car (which survived) & strictly rationed my food/water for 3 days.
Data I collected in DORIAN were mind-blowing—not just minimum 913.4 mb in eye, but also inner-eyewall gradients I calculated later on: as high as 12.4 mb/n mi. (That’s nuts.) Jagged trace is clear evidence of mesovortex action. (All data collected with @KestrelWeather meters.)
@KestrelWeather More shocking: the human impact. I’ve not seen hurricane destruction like I saw after DORIAN. A nuclear-grade combination of wind & storm surge completely wiped huge areas of the town off the face of the earth. The complete death toll will never be known.
@KestrelWeather 6 months later, Marsh Harbour is in bad shape. Much of town is destroyed; no electricity or water. Survivors feel forgotten. Every day is living hell for them. I've found this well-vetted nonprofit committed to helping. CONSIDER DONATING. /end of thread globalgiving.org/projects/hurri…
