Crossing Our Fingers for Sunday!

Yesterday was a down day so we spent the first half of the day in Fort-de-France.  That is the name of the capital city on Martinique, and while we've been here on the island for almost 3 weeks and work only 15 minutes out of the city, we still had not been to FDF.  To make things more interesting we drive to Trois Islets and left from Point-de-Bout on a ferry over to FDF.  For a capital city, it had a small town feel.  The roads were narrow and well traveled and formed sharp edged blocks filled with people and little store fronts selling anything from clothing to KFC.  We visited the market which had an enormous selection of rum punches, brightly colored fabrics, and any spice you can think of.  To finish off the day we ate at a cute sidewalk bistro with deliciously made fish.

Justin and Dan in FDF.

View of FDF as the ferry approached the city.

We made it back into the Met Office for our daily 3pm weather briefing just in time to hear some more awful news about the weather.  We're in a really bad trend right now but we have hope for Sunday!  Hopefully by the end of the weekend the winds will shift more easterly and pick up in speed.  In the mean time, here are some views on our commute to work each day.

Poor little bird in the way of the lawn mower down the street from us...I assume it survived.

Sugar cane harvesting.

Traffic on the way into work.

From our house to the Met Office it is only about a 10 minute drive, but if we leave at the wrong time, it can take much longer.  At least the view of the mountains and cane fields are pretty along the way!  Everything is so green here.


Despite the weak winds, we've continued to fly at a slow pace so we don't get too far behind in flight hours.  We flew again today and it ended up being another example of a thermally driven case rather than an orographically forced one.  We tried a new flight track on the west side of Dominica to get in close to hopefully see some of the wake structure.  Some of my photos from the flight are included below.

Picture perfect trade wind cumuli upstream of the island...except for the polarized window in the way.

A great vantage point of the cloud deck over the island sheared to the east due to the westerly flow aloft.

A more zoomed out view of Dominica showing the suppressed convection around the island.

Tomorrow is another down day.  There is really no point in flying so we'll likely get some work done in the office instead.  We'll rest up a bit such that by time Sunday comes we'll be ready for multiple flights in a row with the stronger easterlies that are headed our way.