I'm looking at the Charging Bull Cam (on Wall Street in NYC) and seeing people in tourist mode strolling up to look at the big bull statue. The umbrellas are manageable and not turning inside out. The signs on the traffic lights are waving gently.
I got to that link from this set of links on my son John's blog. He's in lower Manhattan, and I thought he'd be off line because of power outages (and electricity conservation in anticipation of power outages), but there he is on IM. Hi, John!
He says: "barely even raining out."
ADDED: Actually, "electricity conservation in anticipation of power outages" doesn't make sense in the context of laptop computer and other rechargeable batteries. You can't get more charged than 100%, so if you keep it plugged in, there's nothing to do in anticipation of an outage.
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This Obama guy is good.
As far as I can determine the center of the storm is about over Queens at the moment, so that might explain the lack of wind. A bit farther away from the center it's going to depend on whether or not you're in a heavy shower; it's blowing like crazy a few hundred feet up but it takes convection to bring that energy down to the surface.
Not much going on here just north of Boston at the moment, but I see on the radar that the first of the main rain bands will be hitting shortly.
Well if you're a coastal person of the male gender chances are you're a surfer. I've spent the last 48 years chasing hurricanes to ride the swells. Was a Florida hurricane correspondent for Surfline.com for a few years. I've been caught in a few. First the wind comes in blowing in one direction for several hours. Then the eye passes over and things go quiet. The sun comes out birds sing and people wander out of doors to asses damage. Make sure your car is allright. Surfers bike/walk to the beach to check out the swells and wind. Then as the eye wall passes you run back in doors as the wind comes in from the opposite direction. Roofs blown free come back at you. Everything that was blown off is returned as the wind swings around. If you're actually hunkered down on the coast you do a lot of praying. There are no athiests in a hurricane. As it all subsides and if the damage isn't to great it's time to go surfing. If you're an older surfer like me you have to be more aware of your physical limitations. It's easy to die in big waves. A 55 year old high school teacher (like me) died in New Symrna Beach yesterday. If it's a Class I you'll generally be allright. Less so as you move up the scale. Class IV and above? Run like hell. At any rate the waves are calling so I'm out for my second session of the day...
The surfer dudes were out in force in Delray Beach, FL on Thursday evening as the storm passed to the north and the waves were coming in large from the Northeast. You could hardly find parking along the promenade, and this is the absolute nadir of tourism for the year. I'm no surfer, but those were the biggest waves I have seen. It appeared as if the wave action was so big and so atypical that the surfers were having difficulty launching (getting to the crest to begin riding the wave), as if they were not used to the timing. It was surf-tastic.
The following was posted on Dave Barry's blog a few years back:
You ask:"Is there anything, anything, in all of journalism stupider than when a TV news reporter stands in a bar and shouts unintelligibly into the camera while drunken morons scream unintelligibly in the background?"
Yes. It's when the same TV news reporter stands on the beach and shouts unintelligibly into the camera in the middle of a hurricane to describe what it's like to be a damned fool standing on a beach in the middle of a hurricane.
Bloomberg is an idiot.
This time last year my wife and I were doing a belated 35th anniversary vacation and got hammered by Hurricane Earl (at Category 4 intensity) sideswiping our island. Folks, let me make this plain: HURRICANES ARE NOTHING TO TAKE LIGHTLY!!! The island had no airstrip, the seas were already too rough to leave by boat, and we had no choice but to ride it out with the natives. Our resort was hit with 120 mph gusts and rain that was falling more horizontally than vertically.
On the plus side, Earl's eye did (just) miss our island, the resort had a good generator, the staff did a wonderful job, and we have a great story to tell our grandkids some day.
But it was terrifying. Every deciduous tree on the resort's grounds was knocked over. Big, small, it didn't matter. The reception area, the living units, and the restaurant were still there in the morning, but there was no sign of the beach bar at all. Even the posts supporting its thatched roof were gone.
Now this year, same week, Irene came chasing us. What's it like when you only get brushed by the outer edges of a Cat 1? Not as bad was when you're close to the eye of a Cat 4, but we were still hit with high winds (gusts to 60 mph) and a mere 4" or so of rain.
PS: Surfed is wrong. Being near the eye of a Cat 4 did not shake my atheism.
PPS: With two hurricanes chasing my wife and me in the same week of back to back years, my sons want to know where we plan to be next year so they can be someplace else. Maybe I'll go visit Madison. Let's see if a hurricane can make it that far inland.
Surfers always come out in this weather.
At least a couple - and I have yet to hear of one go missing, interestingly enough.
PS As I said over at Troop's blog, this will be a lot of wind and rain, wet basements, and that's it.
These storms are bad when they first come ashore, but lose steam as they chug up the coast. One that's still bad when it hits Megalopolis is one out of ten in a century.
Number 134 of what is so annoying about local news coverage:
"stay inside!"
"Send us your video and photos of the hurricane."
"Stay inside!"
"Here's video of a man being pulled by a car on his surfboard on what is a sidewalk now underwater."
Winds at 60 mph.
Channel 9 now showing Va gov's news conference. Helpfully, they are blocking out the sign language woman with a radar image that is too small to be readable anyway.
Oh well, maybe people can read his lips about the power situation and flooding predictions.
Hate. Local. News.
Now they've lost the feed. YEA!!!!
I want to see the books for these news outlets once this thing is done.
BOOKS!
I'm not a surfer, but living in Florida and North Carolina I've been through a lot of hurricanes and have no problems with people being out and about in them. It's an exciting experience to be out in the high winds with the trees whipping around. Wouldn't do it now -- I'm too old for such foolishness -- but I understand why these kids do it. It's fun.
It is a severe thunderstorm that lasts for 16 hours but without any of the thunder and lightening.
Irene was my first since we moved to NC from WI a few years ago. We got the "weak" side of her as she was still a Cat 2 before landfall. I'm glad we weren't on the "strong" side.
The hurricane experience is lots of rain followed by a week's cut off of electricity.
The memorable part is the 4 to 6 hours of very loud and continual howling while winds blow the rain sideways into the windows/frames squirting in wherever if finds a crack.
You come to understand why South Carolina, Georgia and Florida house architecture has an extra set of Hurricane Shutters. It's not just stylish.
@Surfed
As 20's somethings stationed in Asia we body surfed after typhoons...very cool.
The Japanese have a Defcom type typhoon warning system...at stage 4 total curfew is in effect. We usually pooled our resources and had a typhoon "party" at one house or another for the duration. Those jeroboam sized bottles of sweet potato saki aren't called typhoon fifths for nothing.
Homes were built of reinforced cinder block with tiled roofs and thick sliding wooden doors that enshroud the entire house. You opened the windows on the leeward side of the house a bit to prevent pressure build up and before the eye wall counter-rotation hit you did the reverse.
We rode out a cat 5 typhoon in 69...some windward windows blew in spite of the shutters...that was scary. We did not body surf after that one.
We also went through Rita in 2005 in FL...our house had roll down shutters and the master walk-in was built as a safe room so we hunkered down. Our house lost most of the ficus privacy fence, a row of Queen palms and the screen pool enclosure but no structural or water damage. We had a generator that kept the kitchen/family room minimally powered. Still it was a bitch living without power, water or sewer for ten days.
We were braced for a giant punch that would knock down the whole town and leave us all dead.
It's been a light sprinkle.
My desk fan blows a lot stronger than this so-called Hurricane Irene.
It reminds me of the John Belushi weather reporter episode on SNL.
I didn't lose a fuckin fig off of my fig tree. This Hurricane was a man made disaster and the man who made it was Nanny Bloomberg. He is the ultimate Elitist jerkoff who uses the hammer of government to destroy liberty. Who the fuck is this dick to shut down the city because he didn't want to look bad. You koow who got flooding?
The douchenoozzles who live where they allways get flooding like in Broad Channel or next to a fucking river. Yeah it was a big storm but it wasn't fuckin Zombie Apocalypse.
This rich fuck doesn't give a shit about the bus boys and delivery guys who had to walk twenty miles in the rain home on Saturday and back on Sunday or lose two days pay that they can't afford to lose. Can you imagine the hit to the economy of Mexico if all of them lost a weekends pay? You don't shut the city down in anticipation of something happening. You let it actually happen first you dumb cunt. But of course Nanny Bloomberg has payed off everyone and cowed everyone that no one is gonna say shit. This is the guy who changed the term limits law because he felt like it.
FUCK HIM A THOUSAND MILLION TIMES.
To the families of those few who were killed, this storm was a horrific disaster, and those who suffered severe property damage have my sympathy. But . . .
The ratio of media coverage to storm intensity was absurd. I live in Texas and grew up on the Texas coast. If a storm of similar intensity hit anywhere along the Gulf coast, the coverage would be less. The difference stems from this storm hitting what is, in the minds of the media elite, the center of the universe.
I agree Joe (I'll stop short of "elite center of universe" since I can't really say one way or the other. I know NYC is an easy scapegoat). But personally, I have no idea how the northeast is doing! A Connecticut friend of mine said parts are bad. Apparently we are pretty provincial here in DC/metro area. I have to watch the national news to know even a sliver about Pa, NJ and NY. And I must say that CBS national news anchor Scott Pelle or Pelly was satisfyingly skeptical of it all, but no one wanted to meet him in his skepticism. The media went all out. Don't expect them to say we were wrong.
Trooper, I guess you never want to be mayor of New Orleans with that attitude. Sugar, sometimes you DO have to evacuate.
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