Month: October 2012

Over here in Pennsylvania, we got it pretty easy. New Jersey and New York got hammered. Here’s some video of the Jersey Shore:

Storm surge is a bitch, and Sandy hit the Jersey Shore a lot harder than Irene did. Meanwhile, a friend who lives in Brooklyn Heights and works in Manhattan sent this:

He’s not sure when he’ll be able to get to work. That’s all going to be seawater, so I’d imagine they not only need to pump it out, but wash the whole system down with fresh water to get rid of the salt. BTW, if you ever read up on the civil engineering works for the City of New York, it’s mind boggling. The Delaware Aqueduct, for instance, leaks enough water every day to supply a small city.

UPDATE: Apparently they are repairing the leaky parts:

The New York City water supply system leaks at a rate of up to 36 million US gallons (140,000 m3) per day. A complex five-year project with an estimated $240 million construction cost was initiated in November 2008 to correct some of this leakage in the Delaware Aqueduct. The work includes underwater diving teams of six divers who live in a 24-foot (7.3 m) pressurized tube that includes “showers, a television and a Nerf basketball hoop” in conditions designed to replicate those of their underwater work site. The divers breathe air that is 97.5% helium and 2.5% oxygen. The six divers descend 700 feet (210 m) to the work site where they work 12-hour shifts at a time. “When the divers aren’t squeaking at one another in helium-speak, three of them use a diving bell to go 70 stories down, where they do things like strip out 4,000 lb (1,800 kg) bronze pipe fittings [in twelve-hour shifts divided up into four-hour demolition sessions and eight hours of rest].”

Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes! The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!

Actually, our immediate neighborhood fared quite well. No major trees down. There are branches everywhere, and everything is covered in leaves, but we came through it well. Everyone’s house in tact. The power played games with us, but we did not lose it for very long. We all had very minor issues. Never even fired up the generator.

I am pleased to have strong trees. That branch on our walkway was literally the biggest thing that came down in the yard, and a few of my trees even kept their leaves. The next neighborhood over did not fare so well. Multiple downed trees. Here’s the local Catholic Church from that neighborhood:

It was difficult to get around over there. We saw a house that had at least six trees fallen on it. The overall structure looked OK, so I doubt anyone was seriously injured, but there were people outside looking at the situation with emergency personnel, so out of respect I did not take a picture of that.

Much of my trepidation was a belief that the meteorologists don’t have a whole lot of live examples of hurricanes getting swallowed by arctic low pressure systems. The last was the Halloween Nor’easter of 1991 which I recall being epic. That extratropical transition happened out to sea. This one was going to happen right near us over land. So is it going to be as bad as the Halloween Nor’easter, or will it be worse? If it’s going to be worse, let’s see, I have a dozen trees, all of which could hit the houses or cars if they went over. Well, it was pretty much the same as the Halloween Nor’easter, I’d say. It seems when a hurricane gets consumed by that, it just spreads its energy out over a very wide area, so I guess it doesn’t matter a whole lot where it happens. But I’m glad we came through with nary a scratch. I’d rather over-prepare then under-prepare, and the beer is still cold. We now will return, shortly, once I read something other than storm news, to regularly scheduled blogging.

The winds are picking up here to the point if I didn’t know what was coming in, I’d think we had a pretty bad fall Nor’easter coming through. I’ll keep posting updates here as long as we can power the blog. The good news is the sump pump is hardly working rather than working hard as it did in Irene. We have water coming in, but slowly enough I am certain the backup pump can keep up. My big concern is now trees, and I believe that will remain my chief concern. We have a very small lot, but we have a lot of trees. Several red maples, and a Sweetgum tree. Some of them could damage the house if they came down, or damage a neighbor’s house, which wouldn’t really be any better.

But, most importantly, the beer is still cold. I repeat, the beer is still cold. We have not yet begun to panic. I’ll keep updating this post from time to time throughout the day. If we do lose power long enough we can’t power the blog, we’ll keep updating on Twitter and Facebook, the links to which you can find on the sidebar.

UPDATE: 11:35AM. Still mostly a typical fall storm. I’d still be unconcerned if I didn’t know what was coming. The real fun begins in the afternoon.

UPDATE: 12:31PM. Situation largely unchanged. The beer is still cold. I just got a good strong gust that made the house creak a bit. I’ve never liked it when that happens, but I’ve been in wind storms in this house before where the house groaned a bit.

UPDATE: 1:36PM. Wind is picking up a bit. Still not scaring me out of my pants yet. But I’m starting to nervously eye one of my red maple trees.

UPDATE: 2:43PM. Wind still picking up, but not unprecedented yet. Water is picking up. The basement is getting wet, but the pump still isn’t working remarkably hard. I had to put a pot in the fireplace. The wind is whipping the rain under the cap. Power still on.

Been listening to the local news radio station off and on. Mass hysteria! It’s the storm of the century of the year! As you can see above.

UPDATE: All state liquor stores closed today at 3:00PM due to hurricane. It may now be time to panic.

UPDATE: Giant cranes and hurricanes don’t mix.

UPDATE: Here’s a great resource for tracking winds. We’re almost at the peak. I’ve seen winds like this before. It’s not bad yet. Rain has been not very bad yet either.

UPDATE 4:36PM: This is from Bitter: We have been listening to radio by internet, and we’re now hearing our local creek as one of the likely to flood areas, and the residents around there were given a mandatory evacuation order a few hours ago. We’re far up hill from there, so that water isn’t a concern for us. They also report that heavier rains on their way. While there are elements about Sandy that are worse than Irene and elements that are better, I’m most appreciative of the fact that it’s happening during the day instead of the middle of the night like Irene.

UPDATE: 5:02PM: Power just went out for a few seconds and came back on. On the bright side, I pulled my dad’s old electric chain saw out of the shed, which hasn’t worked for a while. The motor and the gearing all work fine. I think it just needs to be cleaned up a bit, and it’ll be in good shape. Hopefully we won’t need it.

UPDATE: Power continues to be a little flaky.

UPDATE: 6:23PM: It’s dark now. The wind is blowing pretty good, but not unprecedentedly so for here. The problem for the trees is this is going to go for a while, compared to a normal winter or fall storm. We’ve cracked out the pepperoni and sharp cheddar. Power is doing OK.

UPDATE: 7:00PM. The National Hurricane Center has now reclassified Hurricane Sandy as Post-Tropical Cyclone Sandy. This means that Sandy is no longer a tropical cyclone, and is out of the NHC jurisdiction. She has been consumed, and will now turn into a Nor`easter, or Naw`eastah for those of you in New England.

UPDATE: 8:05PM. Winds have now picked up a good bit now, getting into unusual territory. This is as bad as I remember the Halloween Nor’easter of 1991. Lights are flickering, I’m seeing blue fireballs appearing nearby. Watching trees very very nervously now.

UPDATE: Eek!
The sort-of-local update:

Listening to scanner, they are literally plowing fallen trees off PA Turnpike #SandyCenPA

— Rep. Stephen Bloom (@RepBloom) October 30, 2012

The not-so-local update:

BREAKING:FDNY headquarters on Grand St. being evacuated by boat.#Sandy

— Hurricane Central (@twc_hurricane) October 30, 2012

;

UPDATE 9:15PM: I get annoyed by all the attention on NY while many other states are taking a big hit from Sandy as well, but I have to admit that it is news when the subway system used by so many millions is now being flooded by four feet of seawater (so far) and there are reports that it could be out for a week.

Locally, our county has the most power outages in Southeast Pennsylvania, but we’ve been pretty fortunate so far. *keeps fingers crossed*

UPDATE 9:38PM: NJ is getting hit hard. Gov. Christie has promised kids that he’ll sign an Executive Order to reschedule Halloween in case it’s not safe for them to go out on Wednesday. In the meantime, these are two reported photos from Hoboken – one from a PATH station and the other on a street there.

UPDATE: Con-Ed offers us from fireworks in Lower Manhattan (About 18 seconds in). I was reading about New Yorkers dismayed because ConEd was preemptively shutting off power to Lower Manhattan. People: your lines are buried. When the high voltage, high-capacity main transmission trunks end up under seawater, bad things are going to happen. They are right to be preemptive.

UPDATE: 11:13. All this tree watching is tiring. We were up early this morning. So far I’d rate this as a replay of the 1991 Halloween Nor’easter, also called “The Perfect Storm.” My experience has been far too boring to write a book or make a movie about. I am hoping it stays that way, and tomorrow all my trees will still be upright. We well return to our normal blogging schedule tomorrow in that instance.

Given that I live in Southeastern Pennsylvania, rather than Florida, having two hurricanes come through in two years is not something we’re very good at dealing with. And this one is coming straight in with a strong right hook:

I’m expecting Sandy to bring higher winds than Irene, but not quite as much water. Water was the main problem last time. The winds they are calling for aren’t worse than a strong nor’easter which is a known quantity in these parts, and the trees are mostly bare by this point. Regardless of what happens the next 48 hours, I feel much better prepared for Sandy than I did Irene. Aside from all the home improvements, which should help us weather the storm and keep the amount of water coming into the basement to a minimum, we also now have better preparations than we did for Irene:

• My house is on a hill, so I have some barriers to divert water around the house in the back. During Irene I had to set this up during the storm.
• Generator is full (10 hour run time @ 1/2 load).
• 5 gallon can of gas for an additional 5 hours of run. I wanted another 5, but the area has been stripped of gas cans. In a pinch I can probably get it from the cars, which are both full.
• Sump backup pump battery and deep cycle marine battery are both topped off. I have an inverter standing by to run light appliances, radios, and mobile computing equipment off the marine deep cell.
• Two cases of cheap beer.
• Two cases of bottled water, and two of diet soda.
• A case of baked beans, and I have enough hot dogs in the freezer to make beans and franks.
• Cables for running everything critical off the generator are pre-placed in the house. All that is left is plugging into the generator and firing it up if we lose power.
• Because we’re redoing my office, everything is already out of the basement. But with a generator and backup pump, I think I have pumping covered well.
• I cleared all the grass and dirt off the sewer clean-out, so in the even effluent starts backing up into the sink in my basement, I can pop it off. That will keep things from getting too shitty downstairs.
• Blog is backed up to a secure off-site location.

I should note that we have enough battery to run the blog about an hour. We have enough generator to get us through 15-20 hours beyond that. In the event of a multi-day outage, or a serious problem with the house, the blog will likely go offline. My bigger fear is a fiber cut. But if it’s going to be a while, I will move it to another location. My first priority is keeping the basement dry, keeping the meat in my freezer frozen, and keeping my beer cold. The blog is a tertiary priority. I love you guys, but not enough to drink warm beer, even with the power out after a hurricane.

In the mean time, the rain has started, and the winds have been picking up. My trees and a few of the neighbor’s trees will be my enemy for the next 48 hours. Wish me luck.