She's OK!

Yvonne was able to post on Facebook about 5:30 this evening; she's okay! She was without power but had sewer & water; locals provided them with food. She will be flying back home tomorrow. 

I am glad that Yvonne is not one of the 89 people who are now known to have died in the wildfires on Maui; this has now become the most deadly wildfire in the US in 100 years. There was a press conference this evening about the coordinated recovery efforts. As of today they said only 3% of the impacted areas have been searched by the 8 cadaver dog teams, so the death toll will definitely increase. 

The 1st task on my To Do list this morning was the Cat Genie; it woke me up announcing, "Error, drainage issue" Which is not a comforting message to hear! I raced in to the bathroom to see if it was overflowing; fortunately, it was not so I could slow down & attend to taking Moʻo out for her morning lua. There will be no photos of the clean-up since opening up the entire unit & getting into the working parts is a little disgusting, after all it is basically a sewage handling system for cat waste. But it's all clean now & issuing no more disturbing error messages! (I think being a biologist helps me handle this type of clean up without getting nauseous.)

After that I needed a shower. Since it was daylight & warm out I also gave Moʻo a bath. She does not seem to appreciate baths; she willingly goes into the outdoor shower but then gives me very sad looks when I turn the water on. She doesn't know how lucky she is that she gets lukewarm baths instead of cold ones!

I did a dump run to throw out stuff I removed from the Cat Genie, as well as Moʻo's bag full of filled poop bags. I also threw out the regular garbage from me. I accounted for only about 1/3 of the volume discarded!

I rewarded myself for taking care of those unpleasant chores by stopping in to get some ice cream at Our Founding Farmers. Mark had made a batch of Jaboticaba Sorbet with the 20 pounds of jaboticaba I dropped off with him last week. He used only the juice from the berries which he squeezed out; he had kept the skins on in the process so the sorbet had a nice pinkish color. He will be putting it out for sale once the strawberry ice cream is gone. I also tried the Mango Ice Cream & Matcha Ice Cream that he had made; the mango was not that intense but that is one of the difficulties with using mango in an ice cream. The Matcha was just right, just bitter enough to get the matcha flavor but not too bitter.

It's not on the menu yet.

Jaboticaba Sorbet.

Mango Ice Cream.

I got to taste test the Mango.

Hurricane Dora no longer gets its own warning cone graphic since it is not heading towards any other US controlled areas. But there is a low pressure area about 1500 miles east-southeast of Hilo in the Eastern Pacific basin; it has a 60% chance of becoming a tropical depression over the next 48 hours. It is moving westerly at about 10 mph & is expected to cross over in to the Central Pacific basin tomorrow night.

In the Eastern Pacific basin, Tropical Depression Seven-E became Tropical Storm Fernanda early this evening. It has maximum sustained winds of 45 mph & is moving west-northwesterly at about 10 mph. Forecasters expect it to reach hurricane level winds by Monday as it moves towards the Central Pacific basin. 

The other activity in the Eastern Pacific basin is a large area of disturbed weather south of the coast of Mexico. Forecasters have given it a 20% chance of forming a tropical depression within 48 hours & anticipate that will happen in early to middle of next week. It is moving roughly west-northwesterly.

Hauʻoli lā Hānau e John & Alex!