Octopus Overlords

Over the last ~6 hours, I've watched the news media in NJ go from, "We're watching..." to "This could be a big deal..." and now it's "Hurricane Irene could be the most devastating storm to ever hit NJ."

Regardless, it certainly doesn't look good.

YellowKing wrote:They are saying this could be the worst hurricane to effect the NC Outer Banks/Northeast in 50-60 years.

They're letting schools out at noon tomorrow and we're closing our business center down at noon as well. Looks like I'll probably have to be back at work for recovery procedures Saturday evening. Right now we're looking at sustained tropical storm force (60mph) winds with occasional higher gusts in our county. At least we're on the weak side of the storm, so hopefully it will blow through pretty quickly.

I saw a blurb go by on weather.com indicating that this might be the worst hurricane that has ever hit NC. Apparently (at least according to the blurb), no Cat 4 hurricane has ever made landfall north of the NC/SC border. This one might. They then helpfully pointed out that this storm might rearrange the NC coastline permanently.

At which point it will head off to devastate the rest of the NE. Apparently we aren't prepared for dealing with even Cat 1 hurricanes, and this might hit NYC as a Cat 2.

I'm invoking the memory of Blizzardo Diablo, which saw this kind of hype, and then just went out to sea without hurting anyone.

Blizzardo Diablo

Is anything like the snowmageddon or great snowpocalypse of 2010/2011 that went MIA? As the same time, better safe than sorry. I'd say that's why I live in land and far north as I do where we get close call from a tornado and a few nasty hail storms every decade. But I felt your damned earthquake this week. Keep your freak earthquakes to yourself, east coast.

Kraken wrote:The local media have begun to frenzy. We don't get many hurricanes up this way, either. The last direct hit was Hurricane Bob almost exactly 20 years ago.

My chief concern is that it will wipe out my vegetable garden. My second concern is that our cellar will flood. My third concern is that we'll lose power, and with it entertainment.

We're supposed to have unrelated thunderstorms tomorrow evening, and then the Irene rain will move in on Friday night or Saturday. Guess I'll be picking everything that's even remotely ripe on Friday afternoon. Meanwhile, I'm hoping this thing veers west. West is better than east for us.

wait you're more concerned about your tomatoes than facing $1000's of dollars of basement repairs?

naednek wrote:wait you're more concerned about your tomatoes than facing $1000's of dollars of basement repairs?

Doesn't Obama pay for Kraken's basement repairs?

Hopefully it will be like Floyd? (One of those with an F) that was set to hit us as a Cat 4 then suddenly dropped to a 2 right before it went ashore.

I'm not optimistic for the Outer Banks, however. There's really nothing right now that signifies it could weaken significantly. I'm afraid they're in to be leveled. One of the girls here at work was headed up there this weekend - they rented a house on the beach for a week. Now she's afraid there won't be a house left.

LordMortis wrote:

naednek wrote:wait you're more concerned about your tomatoes than facing $1000's of dollars of basement repairs?

Doesn't Obama pay for Kraken's basement repairs?

Yeah, we recouped our loss last time. A cellar flood would be a major hassle, but there's really nothing I can do about it. The new water heater is up a few inches on bricks, and I plugged the hull breach from last time. Curio City's merchandise is all off the floor. I have two wet-vacs. We'd lose some of the crap that's stored down there, but it's just crap. We'd also lose some clothes because my wife won't pick the piles of laundry up off the floor (there's no place to put it unless she actually -- wait for it -- washes some of it).

We have problems when prolonged heavy rain raises the water table above the level of our cellar floor. I'm hoping that most of the rain from Irene will run off the surface.

My office ceiling is of more immediate concern. When wind drives a hard rain through the chimney's bricks, it eventually soaks through the ceiling. Not much I can do about that, either. Capping, lining, and repointing the chimney is prohibitively expensive. A bucket is not.

Our forecast still calls for more wind than rain. We'll be OK if we don't get too much of both at the same time.

Skinypupy wrote:Guess who is supposed to fly into DC on Sunday for a massive training event that starts on Monday?

Maybe not you?

Smoove_B wrote:

Skinypupy wrote:Guess who is supposed to fly into DC on Sunday for a massive training event that starts on Monday?

Maybe not you?

I was gonna say...I don't think you are, Skiny.

Irene holding steady at 3, may not find enough punch to go to 4.

I was really proud of the weatherman for working in the phrase "Cone of uncertainty" Seriously I'm totally using that in a email at work tomorrow somehow.

As for the actual storm.. I see bad things happening to my office. I could use a few days at home. Assuming it doesn't get knocked apart of course.

I'd probably go with parallelogram of incertitude instead.

The fear mongering on the news has hit epic scales. The way they are talking I might as well max out my credit cards and have a massive party as we're all doomed. DOOMED!!!!

Smoove_B wrote:I'd probably go with parallelogram of incertitude instead.

That's way too hard to visualize for most people. Most people being me.

triggercut wrote:

Smoove_B wrote:

Skinypupy wrote:Guess who is supposed to fly into DC on Sunday for a massive training event that starts on Monday?

Maybe not you?

I was gonna say...I don't think you are, Skiny.

Irene holding steady at 3, may not find enough punch to go to 4.

Yep, along with 45 of the 60 people that were supposed to come in for my training event. Making the final call tomorrow morning, but it looks like the whole event will have to be cancelled. As a commission-only sales monkey...ouch. On the plus side, at least i wouldn't have to miss Utah's home opener on Thursday.

Stay safe everyone.

Alright, try "Cuboid of Dubiousness". Where's Meal? I'm sure he can name some more.

Irene is starting to show impressive convection with tall towers around the eye developing, I fear she might be getting a bit more intensity on this stretch. Regardless, with the model concurrence we are starting to get it looks like there is going to be some awesome amounts of rain over much of the northeast that alone could cause problems. And if the storm weakens there's a good chance the wind field could increase the storm speed slow. It's going to be an interesting ride.

I bought an extra 1.5 bottle of wine... just in case

Of course we will take a few precautions (walk around the yard and secure stuff) and prepare for power failure (storing ice, batteries check) but don't have anything ocean side to contend with and went grocery shopping on Tuesday, so we will be fine.

My wife just called her 104 year old Grandmother who lives alone in a Brooklyn walkup. She thanked my wife for calling and said she doesn't think she will survive the storm, but it's ok because she had a long life

Jag wrote:My wife just called her 104 year old Grandmother who lives alone in a Brooklyn walkup. She thanked my wife for calling and said she doesn't think she will survive the storm, but it's ok because she had a long life

Enough wrote:

Jag wrote:My wife just called her 104 year old Grandmother who lives alone in a Brooklyn walkup. She thanked my wife for calling and said she doesn't think she will survive the storm, but it's ok because she had a long life

I think that level of stoicism would get me in a car to be up there when the storm hit. Then again, my heartstrings are pretty easily plucked.

Storm tracking ever so slightly more eastward at this moment. We'll see. Might spare DC some of the worst, but would still smack dead into NYC.

First an 5.8 earthquake and now a hurricane... This has been one strange week for the east coast

tru1cy wrote:First an 5.8 earthquake and now a hurricane... This has been one strange week for the Northeast coast

FTFY since hurricanes are not that strange from NC down to FL.

I just got a flood warning for my town. We are up on a mountain. If we have a flood, I feel very bad for those in a lower elevation.

Carpet_pissr wrote:

tru1cy wrote:First an 5.8 earthquake and now a hurricane... This has been one strange week for the Northeast coast

FTFY since hurricanes are not that strange from NC down to FL.

agreed

NYC is evacuating Zone A.

Is that a first for NYC? I'm pretty sure NJ's mandatory evacuation order is the first of its kind. It's almost as if we might have learned something from Katrina... Then again, when it stalls to a 60mph passing T-shower, there will be cries of anger and frustration over all the money spent getting ready for the Biggest Storm of All Time (tm). You just can't win.

Jesus. That has to be a first, at least in my memory.

Had a loooong day at work today (up at 3am due to unrelated issue), but we got everything prepped. It will probably turn out to be a nice test of our hurricane response plan - close enough to force us to take all necessary precautions, but hopefully not damaging enough that we have any significant outages.

At home we have everything prepped and are ready to batten down the hatches and ride it out. Due to the weakening and the fact that it has nudged a bit further east, we aren't overly concerned. They're calling for sustained tropical storm force winds with occasional hurricane force gusts here, but because we're on the western side of the storm I think it will blow through pretty quickly.

Maybe a stupid question, but are the skyscrapers in NYC built to withstand something like this?

The newer ones should be built with resistance in mind, but I can't imagine those types of buildings are in the majority. And don't forget about the subway system. I never realized it was a constant battle to keep water from flooding those tunnels. Add in the potential for sustained power loss and 10+ inches of rain? Trouble.

This seems somehow appropriate.

"If an earthquake comes, beware of tsunamis."

(Yeah, I know the difference, but it still is interesting the way we do or do not prepare for disaster)

The biggest fear with Irene right now seems to be coastal flooding.

There's a reason Norfolk has been one of the biggest Naval and merchant shipping ports in the US for so long--thanks to her strategic location, storm surges seem to have little effect on Norfolk. They'll likely see some flooding, but they'll be OK.

Further north, though, is another story. NJ and NYC will see significant storm surges from Irene, and those are likely to be deadly in nature. On CNN earlier they were doing the "lovable old coot who is so tough and refuses to evacuate" story, and all I could think is: it isn't the wind and rain that are going to get you moron, it's the m******f*****g ocean, and Poseidon is a damned implacable enemy.

I was actually watching a show last week made up of personal videos shot during Hurricane Katrina. Time and time again the people were saying, "This is no big deal, we're going to stay and wait it out." Then they'd play 911 calls where people are begging for evacuation and the police are telling them there's nothing that can be done. They offer to take names and once it's over they'll try to send someone out because it's the best they can do. Or even better were the people making filming the first floor of their homes filling with water and saying they can't believe what's going on and suddenly realizing they need to climb into their attic and hope the water stops rising.

Of course I don't expect that level of devastation to occur at the Jersey Shore, but if you're not prepared to bunker in your house for at least 3+ days without running water, electricity or access to medical or outside aid then it's probably best to get the hell out.

My relatives in Va Beach are in for a bit of a ride, but luckily none of them live near the water.

Best hurricane ever.

Just kidding. We have made the most of a bad situation though. Pulled my daughter's tent and mattress into the living room and baked cookies. Fortunately we have not lost power yet.

As far as weather goes, tons of rain but the tropical storm force winds are still a few hours away. There are already reports of some billboards down/trailer damage from small tornados. Because we haven't seen any strong storms in some time I will not be surprised to see a lot of tree/limb damage even though the storm is weak compared to what we've experienced before.

My dad called and he is on standby to head to the northeast for recovery efforts next week. I guess they are still expecting it to cause some major issues in NY and NJ.

We made it through the worst of it. Still gusty here but I went outside and we have no apparent damage and no major limbs down. Did not even lose power, so we're considering this a major win.

There are reports of trees down and hazardous road conditions so work has asked us to stay home until later today, but I imagine all in all we probably came out pretty well.

Good to hear it YK. I'll be checking the weather soon but from looking out the window, it does look and feel different. I've been wishing the house and yard good luck with hopes of stirring up some magic to protect the area. We're attending a birthday party in the AM and will be back in time to witness the hurricane from inside our home. I believe we are prepared, could even have a few family members over if need be.

Well this is a bit discomforting. For the last 4-5 hours there's no denying it--Irene has tracked due north, and not in a more NE direction. She's only a Cat 1, but that greatly increases the likelihood of more damage in DC and Baltimore.