Hybrid Hurricane/ Winter Storm

Ambrosia

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I still have my power and no trees have fallen down blocking the driveway, so it's good so far. My brother in Texas called me this morning all worried because the storm is supposed to take a turn to the north and head straight over us here on Wednesday. I don't know how much power it will have by then, or what the effects will be, but I will be very happy to see this one gone. What a monster.

I hope all the folks here at AW who have been touched by this storm are ok. I am still waiting to hear from some friends out in the NYC/NJ area and keeping in mind lots of people are without power. So refusing to get too worried and just giving it time.
 

Jersey Chick

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Checking in via my iPhone. Our power went out around 9. My neighborhood looks like a war zone with a lot of uprooted trees and torn-off siding. We lost three trees but they were at the far end if the property so no damage. The massive oak tree just behind my dining room is ok. We could've had it a lot worse. This storm scared me unlike any other storm I've ever been through. Hope everyone is ok.
 

Gilroy Cullen

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If ever there was need of an argument over why power lines should be underground, these last few years of freak storms should be all you'd need to prove the point.

To be fair to the linemen that I speak with every day, there are benefits and there are drawbacks to buried wiring.

Benefit: Less likely to go out during major storm
Drawback: Takes longer to repair, because it is more difficult to find the problem.

Benefit: Makes the skyline clearer
Drawback: Cost to bury existing lines is ridiculously expensive. (I'll research this for links to the proper articles once work lets me leave.)

Plus, the safety of the linemen when having to get into the trench after a storm like this is worse than when they go up on a boom. At least on a boom, they are grounded and can (relatively) control their position related to the line and other hazards (like trees.) When in the trench, they have less safety control. The sides could collapse without warning. Water in the trench could become energized if someone isn't paying attention or the generator is incorrectly attached...

(Sorry, this little safety commentary comes to you from almost every meeting we get subjected to every month. Can you tell they pounded it into my head?)
 

Gilroy Cullen

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Checking in via my iPhone. Our power went out around 9. My neighborhood looks like a war zone with a lot of uprooted trees and torn-off siding. We lost three trees but they were at the far end if the property so no damage. The massive oak tree just behind my dining room is ok. We could've had it a lot worse. This storm scared me unlike any other storm I've ever been through. Hope everyone is ok.


This sounds like my neighborhood after Irene last year.
Glad you made it through safely.
 

eqb

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We lost power around 5PM and got it back shortly after midnight. One tree down, but it missed our house by a few feet. The gigantic oak tree stayed firm, thank ghu. I feel very, very lucky. The outage map for the state is scarily dark, and I need to get in touch with my in-laws, who live closer to the coast.
 

mirandashell

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It's good to see people checking in and that everyone is ok so far. Is there anyone we are missing?
 

thothguard51

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I feel extremely lucky. We escaped with very minor road flooding, no power outages and the winds never really arrived as they were predicting. Lost a few old dead limbs on some of the older trees but no trees down. Skies are still a light gray today compared to yesterday, but there is no rain and no wind right now. I also noticed the ground around some of my taller/older tress is very soggy. We are lucky we did not get the wind they predicted.

I hope more and more AWer's can say the same once this is all over.
 

asroc

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My husband and I are both safe and home from hurricane duty. I might have checked in sooner but I was soaking wet, frozen solid and completely exhausted, so I just kind of fell into bed (4 AM, grumble, grumble...) The power was out for a few hours, but came back on while I was sleeping.

Friends, neighbors, relatives are all fine, although some of them don't have power. A tree fell on my in-laws' garage, but no major damage.

Driving during the storm was pretty scary, especially in the evening. Other than that my shift was comparatively normal, just long, but no directly storm-related calls. Many people even downright apologized for "making you come out in this weather." You don't get that a lot. My partner might have possibly saved a family's life though when he noticed that the daughter's asthma attack was probably caused by the generator they were running in their kitchen.

Overall we got off lightly; this could have been much worse. In light of this I also got today off from work. Thank you to everyone who kept us in their thoughts and best wishes to everyone affected by Sandy.
 

aikigypsy

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We had a lot of wind yesterday afternoon and one tree across the driveway, then the power was out for a couple of hours in the late afternoon. It was pretty easy, compared to what we were anticipating.
 

Vince524

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Been at work taking calls from customers dealing with the storm. Best was from an old woman who called to ask why she couldn't get through to a business in lower Manhattan.

"Do you think there might be a problem with their phone line?"

Ummm...... Yeah!
 

TerzaRima

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Mr Bloomberg said the storm had knocked out backup generators at NYU Hospital. Officials "did not count" on that happening, he said. Patients were being moved out of the building.

I read that NICU and PICU staff evacuated their patients down 9 floors and tried to imagine it. Holy Mother of God.
 

mirandashell

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Thank you to everyone who has checked in. I know you've had a lot of other stuff to deal with so it's good to know you're ok.
 

icerose

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Vespertilion

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Checking in on a local bar's wifi.

Annapolis, MD was very lucky. There's a flooded bridge, some trees down, and some marina damage, from what we could see driving here, but otherwise we really skated by. Nothing at all what we were dreading.
 

Lyv

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We had some minor damage to a fence, but never lost power (unlike friends who across town or in different cities) or phone or Internet. Erosion is always an issue with our beach and other beaches around here, so I'm sure we'll hear more about that later. But we were very lucky.

Glad to see so many checking in!
 

RichardGarfinkle

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Sandy's been creeping slowly westward. It's taken all day to cross Lake Michigan (which it wasn't supposed to do at all) and may be about to be sarcastic to the upper midwest (including Wisconsin and those of us in Chicago).
 

cornflake

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I read that NICU and PICU staff evacuated their patients down 9 floors and tried to imagine it. Holy Mother of God.

They evacuated ALL the patients from the affected non-generator area, of all types, who had to be moved to other facilities, over 200, from what they said, down the stairs (up to 17 flights, btw), by hand.

It took hours. The local news kept cutting back to their reporters outside NYU, watching the lineup of ambulances waiting outside and the staff carrying stretchers, people, babies, etc., out one by one.

There was also a picture I saw online someplace of staffers forming a chain to pass fuel up 13 flights of stairs in... Bellevue I think it was, because the basement flooded and they needed the fuel to run the generators.

Here it is, was Bellevue.

Bellevue_human_chain_Sandy_horizontal.jpg
 
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MattW

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Checking in via my iPhone. Our power went out around 9. My neighborhood looks like a war zone with a lot of uprooted trees and torn-off siding. We lost three trees but they were at the far end if the property so no damage. The massive oak tree just behind my dining room is ok. We could've had it a lot worse. This storm scared me unlike any other storm I've ever been through. Hope everyone is ok.
Glad things are safe for you.

We lost power around 6PM, then camped out downstairs with the whole family during the worst of it. Nothing came back until 10AM.

Same story for damage - lots of nearby trees down, debris everywhere. Lightpost blocking one direction on the next block.
 

Specval

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Glad to see so many checking in. Anyone hear from Stormie??

It seems some parts got hit harder than expected and other didn't get hit as hard as expected. Everyone I know already has power back.

I wish anyone in this storms path some good luck!
 

muravyets

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Stay alert to weather forecasts, everyone, especially north of the NY Tri-State area, as Sandy whips around into a nor-easter. As bad as she was here in Massachusetts last night, we're basically just getting sideswiped by the fringes of the storm as she circles around us. Tonight, a little tendril passed over us and delivered a band of 60 mph winds, torrential downpour, and dangerous lightning strikes moving across several counties at 55 mph. It was like a really pissed off monster just ran through my neighborhood. Sandy is still a mega-storm (satellite images are shocking for the simple size of her, essentially affecting almost the whole eastern half of North America) and is still packing plenty of punch.

Sandy is a late-season tropical storm, which grew into monster size because the tropical waters were very warm. It has carried an immense amount of moisture northward into the mid-Atlantic region, and now is headed up against a cold front and mountains, both of which will squeeze that moisture out. Wherever it's cold enough, this will be in the form of snow. Several feet of snow doesn't seem unlikely in the Appalachian regions, maybe in the Adirondacks as well. Remember, in quantitative precipitation terms, a foot of snow is ~equivalent to an inch of rain.

This unusual and unprecedented huge storm is a direct result of unusually warm tropical waters. So, Sen. Imhofe and other deniers, you still think global warming is a "hoax"?

I'll predict more such events along the Atlantic Coast in coming years.

caw
I heard Andrew Cuomo tonight remark that we're getting "a hundred-year flood every two years now." Governors and mayors like him are accepting that this is going to be the new normal, and they will have to adjust municipal and state planning and engineering to suit. IMO, the bottom line is we stalled too long in amending our climate-damaging habits to be able to prevent such things. The global change is putting huge amounts of energy into the atmosphere, which drives these disastrous weather events. This isn't normal, and it isn't the wrath of God, either. It's the bed quite a lot of people have made and now have to lie in. I, for one, personally resent having to lie in it with them.

Rachel Maddow was talking about the Army Corps of Engineers being called in to figure out how to drain the flood waters from the NYC subway tunnels. To be honest, since higher sea level is such a contributory factor to this kind of coastal flooding, maybe they should be reaching out to the Netherlands for advice. This is going to have to be more than a fix. This is going to have be an ongoing, permanent system of water removal, I think.
 

Xelebes

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Looking at the weather office's sattelite maps, the storm stretches from its furthest extent of Kenora, Ontario (near the Lake of the Woods) to Cape Breton Island. These edges might experience some wind and chop, but little to any damage. Georgian Bay is having some spectacular chop right now.