That sucks guys. Stay safe.
Geez some reporters are idiots. Sheepshead bay is not called sheepshead bay because it is located next to the bay. Sheepshead bay is called that because it is named after the sheepshead fish. Don’t these people fill their pretty heads with any facts?
The Long Island evacuation zones are very close to my parents’ house, but don’t quite include them. They’re sure the basement will flood again, as it did a couple of weeks ago during another heavy storm, so my dad put the couches and other stuff on top of risers in the hope those will keep them above water. The carpet was wrecked and torn up after the last flood. My family is staying put in any event. Moving the four dogs would be an enormous pain and staying with my grandparents on the North Shore would drive everyone insane.
Mine is flooding as well. We have a sump pump but it’s on the opposite end of the walls that tend to seep water. It’s already way more than I’ve ever seen come in but we’ve only lived here since December.
My husband is down there now trying to clean it up with a sump pump but I have a feeling it’s all in vain with so much more to come overnight.
So long as we don’t get more than 3-4 inches down there we should be alright as all my belongings are either in Rubbermaid tubs or up off the floor on shelving units.
Thanks, olives. That makes sense.
Glad to see your car is (mostly) safe at least. Can you tell if it got scratched up at all?
All quiet in Burlington county NJ at the moment, although I have been without power for almost two hours now. I hear crickets outside my bedroom window, which means the rain must have stopped for the time being. Not windy at the moment either. PSE and G reports that 41000 of their customers are without power now.
Lights flickered twice so far, here in New Brunswick NJ. Storm’s not particularly dramatic at the moment. Just a bit windy, and not particularly torrential rain, though definitely a lot of it. Some gusts now and then but it hasn’t gotten strong enough to make me want to close my bedroom window. Maybe I’ll get lucky and not lose power. Yeah, right… :rolleyes:
Just lost a tree. Goodbye Mr. Maple.
(to be fair, it wasn’t a very healthy tree)
Tornado warnings and a flash flood on my street at 11pm, and it’s not even supposed to have gotten going yet… I had a blast photographing the river and updating the shop owners, already put up an album on facebook.
I thrive on bad weather, I really do. Is it so sick? I rode my bike to and from work in the downpour… it’s like an excuse to have an adventure!
The storm is winding down here in southern Maryland. Light rain, and 30 MPHish wind. The eye is NW of us, near Philly.
Goodbye Irene, and good riddance.
My window unit A/C is letting water in around the edges (it’s really old and not mounted well) so we woke up to a big puddle on the kitchen floor. Got the towells and buckets under that now because it’s really blowing out there and taking it out now seems like a bad idea.
There’s a huge tree limb down in my front yard and a smaller limb hanging from the power lines but we still have power.
The eye is just hitting NJ so Irene isn’t really even here yet. I must go downstairs and make sure the ladies are OK. They get very, very nervous about bad weather.
And even though I woke up at 5:30 which was not my plan, my cat is sleeping soundly. At least one of us can get some sleep.
Still no power in Burlington county NJ. I don’t know how much of the state is out, but from radio reports it seems like a lot. Lightly raining now, little wind. I charged my phone in my car earlier, so at least I still have internet access, even though typing on this small screen is a pain in the neck.
Portions of the NJ turnpike are closed. Anyone coming up from the south must exit at 7A because of flooding. The lower level of the George Washington bridge has been closed since last night.
Southern CT here. No cable, no wireless Internet! Thank goodness for 3G!
Winds really howling and waves of heavy rain.
I woke up this morning at 4:15 and was so anxious about my basement flooding that I couldn’t relax enough to fall back asleep until around 6:30. Then I had a dream that the basement was fine. Woke up about 15 minutes ago, screwed up my courage, went downstairs to check the basement, braced myself to see ankle-deep water covering the whole floor…and it’s basically no worse than it was last night. My subconscious was onto something! One corner is all wet and there’s a little puddle stream forming in the middle, but the other side of the basement is dry (so far). Maybe now I can get some proper sleep.
No doubt it will continue to seep in water for the next few days until the ground dries out, but by then my dad will have returned and we will figure out how to take care of this.
And we never lost power! (Well, so far, knock on wood.)
Astoria Queens checking in again. Far as I can tell we never lost power. I’ve got about 7 gallons of drinking water in stock and a full bathtub for refilling the toilet.
Upside is the storm has decomposed because of dry air pulled into it over land to the west. Downside is that- according to a person standing at the walls at the Hudson River at Battery Park City, the Hudson River level is showing what it shows at full high tide.
High tide isn’t for 3 hours. 
They’re still looking for a 4-8 foot storm surge. Nothing like the 20 we might have seen, but there will be significant flooding. Just watched a local fave ( and dude who did right by me as a favor 19 years ago ) Al Roker of WNBC standing at Long Beach on the Atlantic ocean-facing shore of Long Island. He’s been chained to a boardwalk bench for hours. ( Last time he covered a massive storm, he was blown over ). His cameraman showed, and Al reported, 20 foot waves.
The water portion isn’t over yet. But the massive wind damage has been dodged.
Sad, that people being interviewed here are blaming the NYC Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, for over- prepping the response. His office failed somewhat during the bad blizzard in December 2010, and some snarky folks are saying he’s tried to make up for it by over reacting, shutting down the MTA, etc.
There but for the grace of god goes 15-25 million people in the greater NYC area. Imagine the flipside? Not being diligent enough? Not closing down mass transit ? Not enforcing evacuation from low-lying areas?? Seems to me he acted perfectly.
I’m watching NBC News 4, and the reporter is standing in Long Beach as well. ( not Al ). Ocean water is running down a street. Water breached and flooded starting 2 hours ago.
This isn’t over yet. Be safe.
Philly suburbs. From my immediate neighborhood, you’d have no idea anything extraordinary had happened. No damage, no power loss, no flooding, but the TV shows a different story for a lot of the area. Lots of flooding in low lying areas, and some trees down.
so far so good in philly. a bit down the road kelly drive is flooded and closed, no surprize there. main street in manayunk is part of the river now. there have been building collapses and lots of trees down.
in the big prewar building, we had no loss of power. there are wall air units and the wind has been wistling through it. one cat finds this fasinating and is monitoring the situation.
waiting for the river to crest at 8pm. that is when parts of downtown up to 20th street can flood a bit. hopefully trader joe’s will be okay.
I’m in southern PA and where I am, it wasn’t too bad. I was just out for a walk and the creek was over flowing, and there were branches and trees down in a lot of places, but at least where I am, things were OK.
Onomatopoeia, where are you in Burlington County? I’m in Mount Laurel, and my house escaped power failure. Actually, we didn’t seem to have much in the way of wind or heavy rain overnight either.
i nearly forgot. last night early in the storm on market between 20th and 21st, two manhole covers popped up and broke windows on the old “triple a” building! that was about the most exciting thing on action news for about an hour.
the aaa building is about a half a block from where 21st street floods. becomes a diving bell really where the street goes under the train tracks and jfk blvd.
All calm and quiet in New Brunswick NJ. Still have power. I count 3 branches down outside my apartment, heh. Still have power, though it apparently went out very briefly as I slept, since my computer had rebooted.
I know it’s difficult to predict a storm, but it’s pretty irresponsible of the media to whip everyone into a frenzy. I heard things as ominious as “this will be the worst storm since the 19th century”. Really? There wasn’t any indication of that, that I’m aware of. I mean, I understand other places may have been hit much harder than we got it here, but still… statements like that are just uncalled for.