Last night I got not one, but three urgent e-mails from my father about the floods, power outages, loss of water services, looting, general malaise, pestilence, and sniffles that hurricane Irene is going to cause. He wants me to stock up on lithium batteries, bottled water, and peanut butter before store shelves are picked clean.
A friend thinks that’s “cute”, and that we’re going to get little more than a gentle tropical breeze and light showers.
So what’s it going to be in New England? A beach day, the Apocalypse, or something in between?
Posting to subscribe, because I’m interested in board consensus. The Mrs. and I are taking our first vacation in a year next weekend, at Ocean City MD. It’d be nice if it weren’t flattened when we get there.
The Weather Channel, which I am totally not leaving turned on in the background right now as some kind of natural disaster porn (mmm, hurricanes), seems to think that you (i.e. New England) may get some flooding and probably some power outages. Stocking up on bottled water is never a bad idea, but I kind of doubt you’re going to have a peanut butter emergency. I’m not an expert, though.
New Englander here with similar conflict. Co-worker emailed everyone in the office saying that her brother, who owns an electrical construction services outfit in Tennessee, is coming up with 80 workers to be possible emergency temps for the utility co. here. So, DOOOM DOOOM DOOOM. But my boss says he has a friend who does something similar and 9 times out of 10 they don’t actually get to work; it’s just that the pay is so good that 1/10th of the time that they’re willing to take the chance. So, gentle breezes. On the other hand, we have a lot of tippy trees up here, and the utilities are not known for being on-the-ball, so again maybe DOOOOOOOOOOM. But Weather Underground updated its prediction for Irene when it hits hereabouts down from Cat 2 to just Tropical Storm, so maybe medium showers. But the Weather Channel got out the pink highlighter for us on their THREAT LEVEL map (pink is for EXTREME). So . . . gentle doom? Potential peanut-butter panic?
I don’t think that there’s any way to know right now, but I’d like to keep this thread going through Monday.
I’ve lived through a good handful of hurricanes here and Gloria is the only one that was more than a stiff breeze. But big ones do roll through every now and then. I know someone who lost a relative in the 1938 storm. Her house was washed out to sea.
Random story, but we actually took hurricane damage here in Ohio, of all places, when Ike blew through a couple of years ago. By the time it got here it was just high winds, no rain, but there were widespread power outages that lasted over a week. It was crazy.
Ha! That sounds like one of Dan Jenkin’s levels of drunkeness; Witty and charming, Invisible, Bulletproof and Fire up the Enola Gay. Someone should create a similar 10 stage emergency level chart. I’d put Peanut butter at what, about a 5?
I don’t get the weather channel map. Irene is supposed to make landfall near the North Carolina/Virginia border, yet the threat level in Norfolk and Boston is identical? Bullshit.
I remember Gloria in NYC. It was no more than a stiff rainstorm. Complete letdown.
I’m in the Baltimore area and many people here are getting nervous about Irene. It doesn’t help that we just experienced the Great East Coast Quake of 2011, or that all the local news and weather guys are emphasizing this big hurricane coming right for us. We’re not coastal, really, so I’m not that worried. Should I be?
I decided to prepare by assuming we would be stuck here a few days without power, so I bought a few easy-to-eat things just in case. Tuna, bread, bananas, cookies, peanut butter. My area often loses power briefly during really bad thunderstorms, so I figure it’s likely to happen if we get lots of wind and rain as Irene sweeps over. I’ve also got flashlights and tealight lanterns with a pile of batteries and candles to keep them going. I’d like one of those crank flashlight/radios but I never got around to buying one and I suspect the stores will be out of those by now. I will also be bringing in all my lawn furniture and garden decorations, because it’s easy enough to do and may prevent damage. Plenty of gas in the car, cell phones charged up, and we’ve also got a great community of neighbors here if shit really hits the fan.
Also, the weather channel makes no sense. Wouldn’t it only be “extreme” where it makes landfall?
I think they’re hoping it sort of bounces off those islands down south, boings out to sea for a bit, collects strength, passes GO, collects $200, then bashes Cape Cod good and hard before rolling up over New England proper.
In fairness, this does make sense: flooding often fucks up municipal water supply. Generally people prefer drinking *treated *water (barring resurgent Dr. Strangelove precious bodily fluid kooks, of course).
Texas Coastal Plain resident here, having ridden out several hurricanes without evacuating I have a few nuggets of info.
If you are in the path of the storm, you should expect to lose power, if you are in a rural area it could be a rather lengthy wait to get it back on. (I waited 10 days after Ike)
Sometimes the storm screws up the cell towers and you phone might not work for a couple days
If you haven’t gone ahead and filled your car with gas, go get in line, nothing sucks more than trying to find a station that isn’t sold out, or has functioning pumps after the storm.
Bottled water is nice, but the pumps on water towers usually have back up generation.
A few bags of ice to keep your groceries from spoiling will make any power outage a lot less stressful.
Are you close to the ocean? Hurricane winds can surely be strong but the worst damage comes from storm surge, which can leave destruction similar to a big tsunami. Once people right on the coast realize it’s going to get bad, they might find the roads flooded–or, at least, really crowded. They are the ones who* do* tend to get killed by hurricanes if they don’t get out in time.
But a storm begins to weaken once it encounters land & you’re pretty far north. Keep an eye on the weather reports; stay inside if the wind starts blowing hard. (Yeah, you could go out to get some footage for YouTube–but you could also get killed by flying debris.) Power lines will go down & trees will go down–often into power lines. So be prepared for power outages. Not dangerous, but quite annoying.
Here are some postcards from the Gulf Coast. The ones showing real destruction demonstrate what Hurricane Ike did to Galveston & other coastal areas. The ones with flooding are what various tropical storms have done to Houston–miles inland.
