This isn’t the kind of hurricane that will rip your roof off and impale you with a tree branch - it’ll be sustained wind and a lot of rain, but nothing that should be life threatening. Sure, someone won’t leave their beach house and drown, and somebody’s going to have a tree fall on them, but if you stay on high ground and away from trees, you’ll be fine.
The real damage from this storm will be economic - power outages keeping businesses from operating, downed trees making roads impassible, etc. The biggest danger is water being pushed up the Hudson River and inundating the New York Subway system. If that happens, we’re talking billions. It is a real threat - Irene pushed water to within eight inches of breaching the subway and Sally is worse. The current track brings the height of the storm surge right at NYC, and the full moon means tides are at their highest.
Wow. I lived in Bound Brook apartments at the time Floyd went through. Which, luckily, wasn’t in downtown Bound Brook.
These days I’m about 30 miles west of Philly, and not close enough to any significant waterways to be overly worried. I went to Wegman’s about mid-afternoon, and while there were a lot of people there, it seemed to be more regular Saturday shopping than storm stocking. There were plenty of staples and non-perishables to be had, including water.
Looks like the cavalry is on the way. I made a trip from Indy to Columbus OH this weekend, and on my way there I passed a few dozen “bucket trucks.” The ones that have the extendable boom with a bucket on the end for someone to get up and work on restoring power. Coming back today there were well over 100… all headed Northeast. There were also the wood chippers, flatbeds with industrial generators and all kinds of things heading out to help out. Word was that they are heading to Eastern PA to wait to see where it hits.
All the shit New York City is doing to prepare for the storm (hitting the off switch for the subway, frex) is going to fuck things up so much that the actual storm will have very little marginal effect.
We learned during the Republican convention that Obama can control the weather. Why would he hit a bunch of blue states with a hurricane right before the election?
Actually, if I put my refrigerator on the highest (coldest) setting, it puts everything in the refrigerator into a semi frozen state. That would cause the food to last longer than just the 4 hours. But you do want it organized so that you don’t have to stand there with it open searching for something.
It sounds like you guys can handle power outages & inland flooding; really annoying but nothing totally new. But storm surge causes the most serious hurricane damage; the aftermath resembles the aftermath from a tsunami…
I was looking at live weather radar and it’s as if there’s an invisible like down the middle of the Chesapeake Bay preventing the rain from coming farther west - weird! It’s overcast and breezy, tho, so the rain can’t be far behind.
I wonder how many leaves will be left on our trees after this little adventure…
Irene caused $15 billion in damage. If the storm hits on the northern track the storm surge could go straight up New York Harbor. That would be very bad.
You know, if for any reason Sandy turns out to be not as bad as expected there will be plenty of folks complaining how the weather forecasters were crying “Wolf!” without needing to. They’d be the same ones to complain if they DIDN’T get dire warnings and were blown out to sea.
everybody stay safe, and good luck with the power. I made it through Isabel without any problems, but that same storm knocked out a LOT of power for a LOT of people for weeks and weeks and weeks. It was pretty bad. Glad to hear about the bucket trucks
Gas panic has set in, at least in Leonardtown. We were going to stop on our way home from breakfast just to top off the car, and the one station was out of regular and plus - only premium remained. So we went to the WaWa closer to home and filled up the Sonata. My Scion has half a tank - that’s good for almost 200 miles. The truck has over half a tank also. I think we’ll be OK. Plus I filled 2 gas cans yesterday for the generator - I expect I’ll be burning that gas in the leaf mulcher after this party is over.
Even if it causes billions in damage people will complain about crying wolf as long as their house isn’t under water up to the roof. “It was just a little windy what’s the big deal?”
Unless things go really weird and it takes the least likely track, I doubt you’ll have much problem. The worst part will be to the north and east of landfall. You should just get maybe a couple inches of rain.
