Leslie and I are still stuck in New Orleans. As I noted yesterday, we have been stranded by US Airways which cancelled flights to Washington yesterday despite the relatively mild weather in the city. It appears that the airline simply did not want aircraft in Washington when the storm hit. My complaint has not been that decision but the lack of consumer support after trying for hours to reach anyone at the airline. We have little choice but to try to drive back to Virginia since we have four kids who are being watched over by our sitter (I also have classes to teach on Tuesday and Wednesday). We intend to be highly cautious and stop if it gets to dicey. However, we cannot leave the kids any longer in this storm.
We have been told that we might be able to get on a flight for Tuesday but it does not look promising. Indeed, it was not even raining last night in D.C. with low winds. Tuesday looks like it will be pouring with strong winds. We love New Orleans (where I used to live) but we are increasingly anxious to be with the kids.
There may be an interruption in my posting on Tuesday in light of our effort to drive back. I will try to tweet on our status.
I hope everyone is safe during the storm. I would not travel if we were not separated from our kids. I strongly recommend that people stay indoors and of course continually on this blog.
mespo/nal,
Good news. Thanks for keeping us outside the Twitterverse posted.
I had figured he would run into blizzard conditions somewhere just north of Abingdon. Glad he could find lodging in Marion. That is just about where the NWS said the southern end of where blizzard conditions would prevail. Blowing snow, wind and almost zero visibility was the forecast.
JT tweets that he made it to Marion, Va by 7:00 p.m. but had to stop due to blizzard conditions. Marion is in Smyth County about 5.5 hours in normal driving time from JT’s home. I hope he was able to get a room at the Francis Marion Hotel. He reports the kids are fine and they have power.
Otteray,
Just a lot of hype…right?
*****
Hurricane Sandy’s Waters Flood Blacked-Out New York City
By Esme E. Deprez, Peter S. Green and Brian Chappatta
Oct 29, 2012 10:30 PM
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-30/hurricane-sandy-blacks-out-skyscrapers-neighborhoods.html
Excerpt:
Hurricane Sandy sent floodwater gushing into New York’s five boroughs, submerging cars and plunging skyscrapers and neighborhoods into darkness.
The storm was shaping up to be among the worst in city history, rivaling the blizzards of 1888 and 1947. Two deaths were reported in Queens and more than 300,000 were without power as of 10 p.m., according to Consolidated Edison Inc. (ED), which cut electricity to protect underground equipment. New York University evacuated its hospital and there were reports of flooding in subway stations.
“We knew that this was going to be a very dangerous storm and the storm has met our expectations,” said Mayor Michael Bloomberg at a news briefing. “The worst of the weather has come and the city certainly is feeling the impacts.”
After the storm’s tide crested about 8 p.m., the East River topped its seawall in the Financial District and flowed up Wall Street in a torrent that turned avenues into canals and intersections into lakes. Flooding took over Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood, submerging cars to the roof, while the Gowanus Canal overflowed and tree limbs plummeted. A downed power line sparked a fire in the beachfront Queens neighborhood of the Rockaways and the sea topped Coney Island’s boardwalk.
Following JT on Twitter. They’re in a blizzard in Marion, Va. I suggest taking I-81 to I-64 to Charlottesville, then 29 north.
Hurricane Sandy: Storm surge floods NYC tunnels, cuts power to city
Nearly a million New Yorkers were without power as hurricane Sandy made landfall Monday night. Subway tunnels, the waterfront, and the financial district flooded.
By Jennifer Peltz and Tom Hays, Associated Press / October 29, 2012
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2012/1029/Hurricane-Sandy-Storm-surge-floods-NYC-tunnels-cuts-power-to-city
Excerpt:
New York
Much of New York was plunged into darkness Monday by a superstorm that overflowed the city’s historic waterfront, flooded the financial district and subway tunnels and cut power to nearly a million people.
The city had shut its mass transit system, schools, the stock exchange and Broadway and ordered hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers to leave home to get out of the way of the superstorm Sandy as it zeroed in on the nation’s largest city.
Residents spent much of the day trying to salvage normal routines, jogging and snapping pictures of the water while officials warned the worst of the storm had not hit.
By evening, a record 13-foot storm surge was threatening Manhattan’s southern tip, howling winds had sent a crane hanging from a high-rise, and utilities deliberately darkened part of downtown Manhattan to avoid storm damage.
Water lapped over the seawall in Battery Park City, flooding rail yards, subway tracks, tunnels and roads. Rescue workers floated bright orange rafts down flooded downtown streets, while police officers rolled slowly down the street with loudspeakers telling people to go home.
Otteray,
Are you one of us buttercups? Buck up!
😉
In New York, NOAA buoy 44065 at the entrance to New York harbor registered wave heights at 31 feet at a period of 15 seconds at 6:50 pm EDT. At 8:50 pm buoy wave heights peaked at 32.5 feet.
FDNY is overwhelmed. This tweet was late this afternoon: “MAN 2-ALARM 92 8TH AVE, MULTIPLE DWELLING BUILDING COLLAPSE.”
Reports are coming in that thousands are trapped in buildings downtown. Some subways are filling up with water. Salt water is not good for the electronic sensors and electrical connections in the subways. One firefighter is reported dead in CT. There have been a number of deaths reported, but the numbers keep changing. FDNY says they will no longer respond to new emergency calls for the time being. They are maxed out and have run out of reserves. I have seen a couple of photos of emergency vehicles sitting in deep water.
So much for all us nervous Nellies who need to get a grip.
What Gene said about taking hurricane and tropical storm weather events seriously. I am old enough to remember Camille. There were dozens of people along the Gulfport and Biloxi area who decided to stay put and have hurricane parties. Their bodies are still missing after 43 years.
After Katrina, there was nothing left of southern Mississippi south of Interstate 10. A friend of mine flying SAR patrol saw something blue in what had been a pine forest about ten miles inland. He dropped down to about five hundred feet to check it out. It was a 68 foot shrimp boat. Ten miles from the coast. It will stay there because there is no way to get it out other than to cut it up into small pieces for scrap, and that is impossible in the thicket of fallen pine trees out in the middle of nowhere. Look up Interstate 10 on a map of Mississippi and Louisiana. Everything south of that, and east of New Orleans was gone.
This monster is so strange there are no computer models for it.
Low pressure in the range of at 940 millibars, which is a scary fact all by itself. Pressure that low helps drive the heat engine that is a hurricane, and that thing is feeding off heat from the warm Gulf Stream. Wind field half again as big as Katrina. High tide at a full moon to enhance the storm surge. Then wrapping around the backside is a deep cold front coming down from Canada which is why the rain is turning to snow and ice as far south as the southern Appalachians. Remember, in the northern hemisphere, rotation around a low pressure area is counter-clockwise. So the warm air from the Gulf Stream is ending up in Canada, and cold arctic air is being sucked down across the entire country east of the Mississippi River. I just read there have been a number of deaths.
Yeah, nick, we are just a bunch of nervous Nellies. I learned to read a barometer before I got out of the first grade. It was a matter of survival. What Gene said.
Elaine
Yes it was crazy… I was sitting in the recliner and I thought the cat was crawling up the back of the chair… the chair was shaking … a friend called and said did you feel that earth quake… in Maine lol
Watching the storm on TV also… yes the scenes are bad….. we had that ice storm 2 years ago… National guard was in Hubbardston Ma… that was scary… Rt 68 in Hubbardston Ma.. was a tunnel of ice from the trees bent over… no power for 10 days … that was my first winter back here after 27 years…. cooking on wood stove…. headed back south in 15 days….
I was working in New Orleans after the Hurricane hit there… it was bad… so much destruction, I worked it for 4 weeks… never had seen anything like it…. there was 8 of us from the Sheriff’s office that went to help out… sad sad… I hope all are doing Ok in NY and NJ… it will pass and everyone will come together…. and help one another…. its just what we do…
Elaine,
I am watching the storm on tv right now. Incredible scenes.
Billie,
We felt that earthquake down here in Massachusetts.
Maine…… earth quake here 2 weeks ago 4.5 on scale…. now hurricane get me back to Florida…. lol
Hurricane Sandy morphs into winter cyclone as massive storm’s reach spreads
Seth Borenstein, Canadian Press
Oct 29, 2012 8:27 PM
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/10/29/hurricane-sandy-morphs-into-winter-cyclone-as-massive-storms-reach-spreads/
Excerpt:
The storm called Sandy messily morphed from hurricane into hybrid storm, losing the hurricane part of its name, but not the weather mayhem surrounding it.
The National Hurricane Center officially pronounced the storm a “post-tropical” cyclone Monday evening, as the centre of Sandy perched 32 miles south of Atlantic City, knocking at the coast’s door. The change is part of a transition into a more diffuse storm that is bigger and sloppier, even as its force weakened.
Sandy continues to merge with what was once two cold weather systems already dumping snow in West Virginia, forming what the hurricane centre calls post-tropical and others call Frankenstorm or Perfect Storm 2. Whatever name it visits as, it isn’t leaving the Eastern U.S. anytime soon.
The storm lost its status as hurricane because it no longer has a warm core centre nor the convection — the upwards air movement in the eye — that traditional hurricanes have, but it is still as dangerous as it was when it was considered a hurricane, according to National Hurricane Center spokesman Dennis Feltgen. It tipped into the post-tropical category because it has become “devoid of thunderstorms near the centre,” said Ed Rappaport, deputy director of the NHC.
That should mean a storm that is larger in physical dimensions affecting more people, but with weaker peak winds, meteorologists say.
Sandy already had been among the largest-sized hurricanes with tropical force winds that once extended across 1,000 miles over open ocean. Meteorologist Jeff Masters of Weather Underground said that as a hybrid, Sandy’s wind damage will be even wider. High wind warnings extend from the Canadian border to central Florida and from Chicago to Maine, he said. But those winds will be less intense than those around the eye of a hurricane.
Ever been in a hurricane, nick?
I kinda doubt it. I’ve been in three including Katrina. So I’m going to call bullshit on your tough guy gibberish. If you’re such a bad ass, you should go get in the path of this storm right away so you can give it the what-for. If you’d ever been in a hurricane you’d know better than to talk that shit, skippy. Tornadoes – and I’ve seen too many of those to count – are like Mother Nature throwing a fit. Bad enough but it’s over pretty quick. Hurricanes, by comparison, are like Mother Nature is on a 70’s style Charles Bronson vendetta against you and everyone and everything around you . . . for days. It’s non-stop sideways rain and relentless wind that just chips away at and shred everything in its path. It will remind you real quick that in the face of nature’s fury, men are small things indeed. If you doubt this, please, do head to the coast. You’ll be disabused of your foolish misconceptions real quick.
nick,
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/wp-content/uploads/scaliagesture.jpg
nick,
Those who died of the flu didn’t survive the pandemic.
True or False?
The influenza epidemic of 1918 killed more people than died in WWI.
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/influenza-epidemic/
Excerpt:
Hard as it is to believe, the answer is true.
World War I claimed an estimated 16 million lives. The influenza epidemic that swept the world in 1918 killed an estimated 50 million people. One fifth of the world’s population was attacked by this deadly virus. Within months, it had killed more people than any other illness in recorded history.
The plague emerged in two phases. In late spring of 1918, the first phase, known as the “three-day fever,” appeared without warning. Few deaths were reported. Victims recovered after a few days. When the disease surfaced again that fall, it was far more severe. Scientists, doctors, and health officials could not identify this disease which was striking so fast and so viciously, eluding treatment and defying control. Some victims died within hours of their first symptoms. Others succumbed after a few days; their lungs filled with fluid and they suffocated to death.
The plague did not discriminate. It was rampant in urban and rural areas, from the densely populated East coast to the remotest parts of Alaska. Young adults, usually unaffected by these types of infectious diseases, were among the hardest hit groups along with the elderly and young children. The flu afflicted over 25 percent of the U.S. population. In one year, the average life expectancy in the United States dropped by 12 years.
Our parents generation survived the great flu pandemic of 1918, the Great Depression and WW2. You’re all a bunch of babies. Ooooh, I think I saw a wind gust and my maple tree was bending!!! You’re parents and grandparents are just shaking their sensible heads from above. Buck up buttercups!
Blouise,
I hope you have a great sleepover with the grandkids! It’ll be much easier for me when my husband and I finally make the move to “the farm.” Then I’ll see Julia every day!
Elaine,
You’d mentioned cooking for the party and I wondered if it was last Saturday.
All trick-treat nights have been cancelled here and rescheduled for Sunday … just too much damage already and more expected.