It has been almost a week since Hurricane Odile marched up the baja peninsula leaving a path of devastation, destruction, and heart ache in its wake. This storm according to Jeff Masters blog at weather underground was quite likely the most powerful hurricane to ever hit the Baja peninsula. San Carlos was relatively untouched by the storm with the exception of a few homes on manglares receiving their normal pounding and the El Mar restaurant over at La Posada. It should be noted that w
hen the Caballero family built La Posada they clearly built far to close to the beach and over the years the southern end of that building has been pounded again and again and again by waves. It might be time to tear the structure down once and for all since with global warming on the horizon it is only a matter of time before San Carlos gets hit with a real storm. If the tide had been coming up instead of down when the swells hit; this storm, even though the center was over one hundred miles away, would have been far more devastating than it was.
The storm track kept the center of the storm well away from San Carlos and as usual the mountains of the Baja, La Sierra de La Giganta helped knock down the winds. Amazingly not one palm tree or light post came down in town and electricity was never lost by most residents. The bay was a different story though. At least three sail boats broke loose from their moorings and ran aground. Two monohulls which have sustained minimal damage and one old Piver trimaran which was completely destroyed. San Carlos has dodged another bullet and through luck and geographical placement we have once again been spared the horror that kicked the crap out of Los Cabos and La Paz.
The two videos above and below are shots I took of San Carlos. I missed the biggest waves of the day though but the second video below has a few decent shots of the wind that we experienced in the evening. The videos off to the side are from the Southern Baja.