The convo drifted toward whether Irene was hyped. Irene was hyped, based on the perspective offered towards how media outlets don’t go bat shit crazy over other ominous threats.
Be safe.
You may proceed with Irene. 
Preparing for the worst and trying to get peole to take warnings seriously in the face of a powerful and unpredictable storm is not my deinition of “hype.” In my area, Irene turned out to be less devastating than it could have been, but I do not consider the preparation I did to be “wasted.”
When the first blizzard falls, I’ll be all set for canned soup. 
I am still waiting for cable and internet service to be restored at my house on Long Island. Whenever I call Cablevision/Optimum, I get a busy signal. So I asked a support representative in online chat, “When will service be restored?” I received the following non-answer:
This provides no information which is to be expected from the cable company.
Even if we acknowledge the impact of Nor’easters, and they are substantial storms, their major impact is generally confined to the coasts. The deep snow and closings cost money, but don’t do much infrastructure damage inland aside from collapsed roofs. Along the coast there is significant damage but the people who are affected generally know they are at risk. Beach erosion, houses flooded, and seawalls breached happen periodically, even in the best protected areas.
Irene brought severe infrastructure devastation to areas that haven’t seen anything like this since the hurricane of 1938. The floods wiped out roads, bridges, and down towns in Vt, NH, and NY like nothing since then, and in place surpassing those levels. It’s affected transportation throughout the region and the disruptions will last months as the bridges get repaired. Entire towns are cut off from road traffic.
This doesn’t happen every generation, let alone multiple times per year. Look beyond the coast and you will see that this was a major event.
I can tell you that in CT, all the massive storms we had in January were an extremely big deal, got tons of TV and internet play, schools closed in advance etc etc etc. They didn’t have a name, but no one ignored them either. I’m not sure I believe the premise that only named storms get attention. Sure wasn’t true here.
No, it is an answer; it’s just not the one you wanted.
They should go by Scotty’s rule: tell 'em it’ll take two weeks, and when it takes them only six days, you’ll be REALLY IMPRESSED. 
Then it seems to me that Irene was not over-hyped, but rather that the other storms were under-hyped.
And the Christmas blizzard got just as much coverage in NYC as Irene did.
The hype argument is really pissing me off. Tell my coworker that had three trees fall on her house, a lot of water in the basement and first floor, and a neighbor killed by the flooding creek (and another neighbor’s house destroyed) that it was all hype. Or that all the damage done to another coworker’s mother-in-law’s house was hype. That all the flooding and damage in Schenectady and Albany and Rensselaer and Schoharie and Greene and Ulster and Delaware counties (apologies to any I’ve forgotten) was hype.
Large parts of the Catskills and Hudson Valley have been majorly impacted by Irene. Just because the media didn’t get the 9/11 times 1000 destruction of Manhattan that they wanted doesn’t mean that lots of us in the rest of the state that actually feeds and waters that rather ungrateful city aren’t hurting. I’m so sorry that the storm wasn’t exciting enough for you. We just have to deal with the excitement of record floods, washed out roads and bridges, tons of closures, and massive amounts of cleanup.
I don’t know what’s with the antipathy toward New York City in this thread. First it was “you’re a bunch of wusses, it’s just rain” now it’s “you don’t care that other people got flooded!” New Yorkers are well aware of what happened, thanks. There are dumb people everywhere (and to that end I’ve heard lots of non-New Yorkers talk about the storm being overhyped), but Brooklyn and Staten Island are part of the city and some of those places were swamped. And plenty of us have family or friends on Long Island like I do. If anybody’s ignoring what is going in up the coast or upstate or in Vermont, that’s unfortunately. But it’s not about New York City.
I’m in northeastern RI on the MA border, in the suburbs, and have been without power since Sunday at 9 am. We’ve been told that it may be 2-3 more days, and we are far, far from remote.
I’m sorry, Philster, that more people didn’t die/the wind & rain wasn’t bad enough for you and that the hype annoyed you, but from where we’re standing in RI, this not even a hurricane by the time it hit us has had a huge impact.
if one of those was an ash tree you could look into making baseball bats. i’ve always liked those big slab of wood tables and benches. perhaps there are artisans in your area that make those. also if you could get hold of a wood mill perhaps they could cut the trees into planks or flooring.
that would be cool. see this floor, very lovely it is, we call it irene.
POWERRRRRRR!!! AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!1!!
Um, sorry 'bout that. Everything turned back on about an hour ago.
I called Cablevision again this afternoon and another clueless rep told me he didn’t know when my cable and internet service would be restored. Then magically everything started working tonight. So I am now 100% back.
However, all of my neighbors across the street from me are still without power. One of them put a gigantic “LIPA Sucks” sign on their lawn today. (LIPA is the Long Island Power Authority).
This is a common problem throughout the region: Days After the Storm, Many Are Still in the Dark. I now realize we can be plunged into darkness anytime a storm hits, waiting for bungling idiots to fix things with no recourse other than buying generators.
How sad that you have to rely on bungling idiots to deal with all the storm havoc. Our electric co-op crews worked their collective asses off with the assistance of a number of out-of-state crews. They were replacing poles and transformers and lines all over the county. From the co-op website, last night’s status:
Cause of outages: Trees are down, wrapped in lines, and leaning on lines, and poles are broken.
Substations: All substations are energized.
Status of feeders: 1 feeder off; 82 feeders were off at peak of hurricane.
Number of SMECO crews: 58
Contract crews: 88
We were without power for almost 48 hours, and as annoying as it was, we survived. If we were still without power, I’d be unhappy, but I know how hard the crews are working - I saw them along the roads and back in fields and in places I know they had a tough time accessing with the ground so wet. I’m more than satisfied with the progress they’ve been making - our co-op rocks!
That’s what my BiL and his woodworking club did with trees downed by Ivan. BiL & Sis kept one of the tables.