Goodbye, Wake Island

At least for a little while. A Category V typhoon is scheduled to sweep over the remote Pacific island tomorrow, and is expected to submerge the island and destroy anything not made of concrete. There are no permanent residents on the island, and those working there are being evacuted to Hawaii, but this is a sobering reminder that an island in a storm is often not a safe place. We saw during our trip to the Bahamas how low the land is relative to the calm water; a storm surge of any strength can devastate low lying areas. When the entire expanse of the land is a low-lying area, the island simply disappears from the map for a while. It is a very unsettling thought to this life-long continental dweller.