Octopus Overlords

Stay safe, Trig.

Storm? What storm? We'll just anchor up here.

Odin wrote:Stay safe, Trig.

I doubt I'm in any danger of anything but inconvenience (knocks wood), but I appreciate the sentiment!

The big thing now will be hopefully keeping Irene away from the entrance to the Chesapeake. The same wide deepwater channel that makes it such a good harbor and port is also hurricane catnip--it'll draw elements of the storm right up the bay and really cause some flooding damage in the low-lying areas around it.

We spent all last week on Long Island with the In-Laws. Spouse and I have planned all along to leave the kids there for an extra week while we return to Philadelphia, where we are to repaint two bedrooms, make some fixes, and swap a lot of furniture around. When the kids return, they'll have a new, bigger bedroom and everything will look a lot better than before

So now we're back in Philly, where we expect severe wind and rain but probably nothing like a real coastal hurricane. Meanwhile, we have left our children on an island in the direct path of the monster.

Ok, Irene is going to be a mess.

She's *inside* Cape Hatteras, which is sunny and clear right now. She was projected to go right over or a bit out to sea from there, but instead her eye is in the Pamlico sound right now--west of it in fact.

Irene right now is much further inland than expected last night. If you are in the DC/Baltimore area DO NOT SLEEP on this storm. Be ready for power outages. If she doesn't veer back on a ENE track soon, we are going to get slobberknocked.

Starting to see a few bands of brief but heavy showers here. It's a little breezy, but not unusually so.

Yet.

It's not supposed to start raining in earnest until tonight, with the main storm raging all day tomorrow. I guess I'm about as ready as I'm going to be.

The NYT has a nifty tracker here that shows it riding a line up the coast past New Jersey.

In the last 10 minutes what was a strengthening eye wall just collapsed. Irene should start to fall apart a bit now, and an uptick in winds from the west blowing east will take her on an ENE track now.

DC in better shape than it was a half hour ago. NJ/NYC still kinda screwed, but this storm is really knocking itself apart over NC and SE VA.

Appreciate the updates, triggercut. We have the weather on in the background, but your nutshell updates on the actual storm track are what we really want to catch. We're about to make dinner a little early in case we lose power at some point. If we lose power, I of course have the DSiXL all charged up.

The wife has invented a special dessert/cocktail for Irene--raspberry sorbet, framboise, and vodka.

My wind gauge is now showing sustained winds at 18-27 mph, with gusts well over 35.

We are definitely in Irene's sphere of influence in the DC area and suburbs. She's definitely further west than I'd like, and by 8pm this could turn into some nasty weather. It won't be like Isabel by any means, but it'll be a good amount of rain and high winds.

Ok, a new game is installed into the DSiXL for late-night playing if the power goes out--Ghost Trick Detective. We have a nice flexible tree across from our back window that gives us a pretty good visual of how the wind is doing. Luckily, our back balcony patio is on the west side away from the wind, but the back door is still giving a few creaks and moans when things gust up.

I'm in central NJ and the wind really just picked up. We're seeing the outer bands only so far but it seems to be getting worse fast. Friends of mine were evac'ed out of the Jersey shore region and I recently just heard of one inland in a low lying area. We had a bad run of rain and it's not looking good for the usual flood towns in the area. For example, Main Street in Bound Brook, NJ might be underwater for the 3rd time since 1999. Yikes.

The local news says our strongest gust so far has been 49 mph (from a reporting station just a few blocks from us).

Hype aside, this doesn't look much worse than your typical nor'easter by the time it reaches us. Peak here is supposed to be 4 pm Sunday with top winds around 50 mph.

So far we've only had light rain.

South Jersey here (Gloucester County) and we're all hunkered in the basement as we've got some tornado warnings in the area. Otherwise it hasn't been too bad... wind and rain started coming on strong around 8pm but nothing horrible. We'll see how things go.

First time I'm seeing this (from NOAA):

MORE SO THAN WITH MOST STORMS...THE WINDS WITH IRENE INCREASE SHARPLY WITH HEIGHT ABOVE THE SURFACE. AS IRENE MOVES THROUGH AREAS WITH HIGH-RISE STRUCTURES...THESE STRUCTURES WILL EXPERIENCE WINDS SIGNIFICANTLY STRONGER THAN INDICATED BY THE ADVISORY INTENSITY. WINDS AT THE 30-STORY LEVEL WILL LIKELY BE 20 PERCENT HIGHER THAN AT THE SURFACE...AND WINDS 80-100 STORIES UP COULD BE ABOUT 30 PERCENT HIGHER THAN AT THE SURFACE.

River by my work is predictd to hit around 12 feet... Looks like I will be working from home this week. I had a vacation day and they won`t give it back. Sucky..

Assuming your office (and your house) have power, yeah, you'll be working from home. We didn't even get started yet and there's already 20K in South Jersey without electricity.

Smoove_B wrote:Assuming your office (and your house) have power, yeah, you'll be working from home. We didn't even get started yet and there's already 20K in South Jersey without electricity.

I should post the caring message my job sent on Friday. Basicly said you better get your ass in the office on Monday and don't be late! I love my job..

Times Square has a waterfall:

http://lockerz.com/s/133562243" target="_blank

Edit: might be faked?

A lot of gusts right now. I can hear transformers shorting in the distance. Two very quick outages so far and hoping that's the extent. More importantly I got some Deus Ex Human Rev time in before shutting the pc down!

-Yeah this is sent through that Tapatalk thing.

Grrrrrr... so we were all hunkered down in our finished basement, I was checking that our sump pump was working, etc. In the meantime I had a perfect excuse to be on the computer and play online some. Lo and behold, not 20 minutes after I made my previous post... Comcast crapped out on us. We had power and telephone, but no TV or internet

Anyway, the wind and rain has sort of slowed down now... I'm guessing we're in between bands of the storm at the moment.

Irene is disorganized, but she's holding hurricane-strength winds of 80 mph in gusts and is right over NJ right now. If she continues to maintain we're going to see some pretty frightful property damage totals in NJ and NYC.

CT is doing fine, in my opinion. Lots of rain overnight and the power went out around 7AM.
I checked the radar which showed me the rain should stop in about 2 hours (if I'm understanding things correctly).
Going to get up now and rummage through my camping stuff and figure out how to boil water for coffee and tea.

Here in my Philadelphia neighborhood we had an easy night as hurricanes go: just high wind and rain, but no damage that couldn't have come from an especially bad thunderstorm. We never lost power. But I live on high ground, the ridge between a river and a big creek. In low-lying areas there has been serious flooding. This will continue for a while as the rivers channel all the water that has been dumped on eastern PA.

Two of my neighbors have parents who evacuated to here from their homes on the New Jersey shore. We're waiting to see whether their houses made it OK.

Some people here are using hindsight to jump on the mayor for "overreacting" to the storm. Those people are idiots.

Yup. If there aren't houses missing a roof or water 10' deep, it was an overreaction. We never lost power (which I don't understand, but hey) and there's minimal water in my basement. Clearly my fall project will be to plug the apparent pinhole cracks in my foundation. Minor for us but it looks like other parts of NJ were hit pretty bad. Lots of downed trees and wires. Flooding from the rain...now we wait for the rivers to rise...

We had a few flickers during the biggest wind gusts (up to about 60 mph if I remember correctly from my overnight news watching) but never lost power, though I could see what looked like transformers popping off in the distance. There are lots of big trees down, especially in DC and MD, but thankfully only leaves and sticks around where our cars were parked. There are a lot of people in the area without power, so we got a little lucky. I don't think Old Town Alexandria even got much flooding at all.

It was a pretty good show here from about 2-4 am though.

Winds are still a few hours away from their predicted peak here in MA, but so far it's no worse than your typical nor'easter (as I predicted in my last post). Rain isn't heavy enough to worry me about flooding. If the power goes out at all -- and the lights have flickered a couple of times already -- I doubt that it will be for very long. My town has its own municipal power company with only a few thousand customers, so they're usually on top of outages very quickly.

Now I'm going to make the spaghetti sauce that I meant to make last night. It took me much longer to process 15 pounds of tomatoes than I expected so we ended up going out for dinner.

Power out here around 2am, restored by 4:30.

Other than that, Irene only glanced off us.

Power was out from 4:30 am until about 12:30 pm. Basement stayed dry, but I sprung a leak (again) in a bay window in my kitchen. I have been battling this leak for 2 years now, so that wasn't unexpected. My previous "fix" worked for the past 6 months, so hopefully it's just a case of doing the same.

triggercut wrote:Power out here around 2am, restored by 4:30.

Other than that, Irene only glanced off us.

Ours was out from noon to 2:30 pm. The storm is nearly over. Some of my tomato plants are bent over, but I think I can stand them back up tomorrow if the metal stakes aren't permanently bent.

Spaghetti sauce is simmering away. I'll freeze most of it to be eaten throughout the winter.

Glad to hear that it was much ado about nothing. Certainly preferable to the alternative!

In all the hyperventilating media coverage of Hurricane Irene, there were several "mandatory evacuations". Whether it is a reckless decision on the part of the homeowner to remain in the path of an oncoming hurricane or not, how can a mandatory evacuation be even remotely constitutional?

Anonymous Bosch wrote:how can a mandatory evacuation be even remotely constitutional?

No one will come and force you to leave. It's the government's way of saying, "This is your last chance - if you choose to stay, you're on your own and you assume responsibility for yourself." It's a reminder that fire/police/rescue are not going to put their lives in danger to come get you when you've had ample warning to vacate.

Settled on tea this AM. Ended up using my fondue pot's base for the camping pot and got steaming water from 3 tea light candles!

All family members are doing fine, my brother with 4 kids has power (we all are honestly happy about that)! My mom and dad are touring the city checking out all the flooded areas. We might head out to eat tonight, going to talk about it now.

There are about 3 houses around here that are using generators... they are loud suckers!
Hoping for the power to come back on before sunset.

KKBlue wrote: There are about 3 houses around here that are using generators... they are loud suckers!
Hoping for the power to come back on before sunset.

When our power went out I figured I'd work in the kitchen with the window open so that I could listen to the wind in the trees. After a few minutes somebody tried to start up a gasoline engine (I thought it was a chainsaw)...and tried...and tried...and tried...and finally succeeded. His generator then proceeded to disturb my peace for hours.

I've lived in this neighborhood for 22 years and we have never lost power for more than a couple of hours. Why somebody would feel compelled to own a generator is beyond me. Maybe someone living there is on some kind of life support device. I could excuse that. But i doubt it. More likely he's just one of those paranoid types who over-prepares for everything.

Of course the power came back on within a couple of hours, but Generator Boy didn't realize it until hours later. That damned engine was running all afternoon.

Lost power here in Southeastern PA from 11 last night until about 4:30 today. A few leaks, library and basement, but not too many books destroyed and we've already got the dehumidifier running down in the basement now that power's up (not even bad enough for a pump). Otherwise, no issues here, and it's not like we won't use up the spare water, food, and beer we laid in for a much longer outage.

I was wondering what all the panic was about. Being from the gulf coast, we usually ride out even weak category 3 hurricanes. The weak cat 1 that just blew through the northeast wouldn't even cause us to board our windows up. It's nothing more than a very wet thunderstorm (without the thunder).

If a category 3, 4, or 5 had hit NY it would have been catastrophic. If it ever comes to that, a lot of people are going to die because they will think back to this weak system and stay where they are instead of evacuate.

Edit to clarify: I live in B'ham now, which is inland enough where I don't worry anyway. I grew up, however, in Mobile where we could expect a hurricane every few years.

Note - this isn't directed at anyone here, but at a number of articles/comments I've seen on various news outlets.

I personally don't like the armchair quarterbacking of questioning the media hype, evacuation orders, etc. There was a point just a few days ago when this thing looked like it could hit with strong Category 3 winds, and we're all just fortunate that it weakened and fizzled out instead of becoming the destructive storm it could have been.

There's nothing wrong with a disaster plan being put into effect and no disaster occurring. That's a GOOD thing. Furthermore, it gives people practice and a chance to test their plans in a real-world situation without having to deal with a catastrophic aftermath.

Our hospital treated this as if it was a Category 4 storm. We had prep teams in action, sandbags around the data center, a storm team staffed 24/7 over the weekend, and a recovery team. Was that overkill? As it turns out, yes. But it was a fantastic demonstration of how prepared we were had this been a serious storm, and how well that plan worked.

As "laughable" as this storm may seem to some, it still killed people, caused damage, destroyed property, knocked down trees, eroded beaches, and cost businesses millions of dollars in lost sales. If you were one of the folks directly impacted, I doubt you'd feel much like laughing about it. An 11-year old child in Virginia was killed when a tree fell on his house, and another child died in North Carolina in a traffic accident due to lights being out because of the storm. Wonder if their parents are at home howling with laughter at all the hype?

What YK said. If they'd waited to see that Irene was going to lose strength instead of gaining it, it would have been too late to evacuate. It's far better to err on the side of caution when you're talking about a significant percentage chance for a category 3 hurricane hitting New York City (or any other densely populated area that isn't used to hurricanes at all, let alone cat-3s).