The un-hurricane

"Todo quedó en un susto"

That's one of the headlines from today's Prensa Libre newspaper. Roughly translated, it means: "it was all just a scare."

When I awoke this morning I wasn't sure what to expect. I hurried to my apartment window and was surprised to see the sun burning brightly in a shockingly-blue sky.

Thankfully, hurricane Adrian quickly lost strength last night as soon as it hit land in El Salvador. Trees were knocked down, there were power outages, but no major damage was done. There is very sketchy information regarding fatalities:

Already one death was indirectly linked to the storm: a military pilot died Wednesday when the small plane he was ferrying from San Salvador's civilian airport to a military base as a precaution against the heavy winds crashed. Officials did not give the cause of the accident.

In neighboring Guatemala, two workers were killed in the collapse of a ditch they were digging under a light rain in the village of Caxaque, 160 miles west of Guatemala City. Local firefighters said it was unclear whether the collapse was related to the rains.

[Associated Press]

All things considered, it looks as if Central America got off easy with this hurricane. (I'm sure the Rhodes family in Florida would agree with that!)

My thanks, though, to all of you who kept me company in the tense hours leading up to the storm. I was "blown away" (heh, sorry) by your kind comments and emails.

And now, nuts, it looks like it's going to rain.