Like many folks with online friends in the North-East of the USA, I’ve been watching the weather reports with great big saucer eyes.
Keep safe, and if you feel like it, please drop a comment here telling us how you’re going.
Index Thumbnail Image Credit: Hurricane Sandy by Todd Hale (seriously good photographer and photomanipulation artist)
In case you hadn’t noticed that HaT was missing in action for a while today? 
Hoyden About Town 
In news that will shock nobody, a conservative pastor reckons that this storm is all the fault of the gays.
I’m in Connecticut, about 75 miles NE of NYC, and about 15 miles inland. It’s been blustery and gusty all day, with some gusts absolutely alarming. Fortunately, the trees on my lot are downwind of the house. The lights have flickered a few times, but, amazingly, I still have power, phone, and internet. According to the forecast breakdown, there is a chance of thunderstorms this evening (it’s 6:30 PM local time), but the wind should die down in the next few hours.
On the other hand, a friend of mine on Long Island has been tweeting pictures of her house surrounded by water. The storm surges (and the evening high tide is around now) have been unprecedented. So, while I’ve been relatively unaffected, other than bruises acquired while stowing outdoor stuff yesterday and an elevated anxiety level today, this has very much not been a non-event. Big chunks of the Atlantic coastline have been reconfigured.
Alice, glad to hear you’re OK. Was just reading some predictions that a separate weather pattern is going to bring you all a Mega-Blizzard following the hurricane – you lot get all the luck, eh?
I’m good so far. Just some strong strong wind and heavy rain.
Good to hear it, Eden. There’s now rumours of an explosion at a Con-Ed distribution station at the corner of 14th and FDR, half of NYC without power and the NYSE under 3 feet of water. Hard to know how much is exaggerations though.
I have been following various NYC twitter feeds, and have friends from NYC on various fora. The short version is that the fires and the subway/PATH flooding are real, and there is more street-level flooding in Manhattan (i.e., further north) than had been predicted. But the Stock Exchange is apparently not under 3 feet of water.
Tigtog: the snow is on the west side of the storm, in West Virgina, western Virginia, Tennessee, etc. On our side of the storm, it’s actually unseasonably warm, and will be for the next few days.
I rather enjoyed this post on The Atlantic categorised as InstaSnopes – sorting the real Sandy photos from the fakes.
Alice, I’m glad you won’t have the snow to deal with as well! Not so nice for the more westerly folks though.
Interesting infographic here on Our ABC:
<a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-30/infographic-how-hurricane-sandy-compares-irene-katrina-yasi/4341760http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-30/infographic-how-hurricane-sandy-compares-irene-katrina-yasi/4341760</a>
Interesting to see the comparative differences between the four storms, and realise that the one which was most powerful of the lot (Yasi) was also the one which had the lowest death toll (so far) and which caused the least long-term economic damage. Okay, it also crossed the coast in an area which was much less populated than anywhere on the US east coast, but also I think at least part of the advantage is that practically the moment the storm warnings had died down, folks from Centrelink were out there processing applications for disaster relief right alongside the people doing the actual cleanup. It’s a standard part of the Australian disaster recovery process these days – the disaster goes through, and right alongside the people cleaning things up physically are the folks from our social security apparatus ensuring that the financial side of the cleanup starts too.
Meanwhile, one of the USA’s two presidential candidates for their election is busy talking about de-funding their emergency services planning apparatus (as though that’s going to help anyone).
I live on the Hudson River, about 20 miles north of midtown NYC. Very little rain (less than a good thunderstorm), and the wind even at its peak wasn’t much more than some storms we’ve had already this year. But the river did rise a couple of feet from the storm tide/surge, and the train tracks (which are right along the river) were flooded to the top of the (electrified) 3rd rail. There is a bunch of low-income housing built on what I would have called a flood plain if the Hudson were in the habit of flooding, and they had a few feet of water last night.
According to news reports, a number of subway, train, and highway tunnels were flooded. My guess is that that is going to take days to fix, maybe longer.
At this point, I have power, telephone, and even got my (cable) internet access back an hour or so ago. The others in my group at work are not so lucky: one lives on the New Jersey shore and was evacuated, another in an evacuation zone in downtown Manhattan. I’m the only one who has confirmed that he has power.
I had to laugh about the idea of the NY Stock Exchange being under water — it’s right by Broadway which is (WAG) 50 feet above river level. But some financial markets are housed in the World Financial Center, which is built on landfill right by the Hudson, and it’s possible that their buildings have water in the basement. Also, whole sections of downtown Manhattan evidently had power turned off (I know my office is off), and a lot of networks are down. The US equity and option markets are closed for this reason (as well as the difficulty of getting employees into town), and I assume that any NYC-based commodity markets are, too. I don’t know about the commodity markets based in the middle of the USA.
Further updates on the various bits of online rumour-mongering – apparently the main name behind them was a Twitter identity called “@comfortablysmug”. Some unmasking has occurred, and it turns out that @comfortablysmug is actually a hedge fund analyst, who is also the campaign manager for a Republican party candidate and a Romney campaign fundraiser. No prizes for guessing the possible motives there, hmm?
Got my details of this from Making Light – there’s a mention of it in the original post, and the unmasking occurs at comment #33.
I suspect the next question is going to be “will he be facing any civil action for his acts of deliberate misinformation?”. I’m hoping the answer is “yes”.
As Liss would say, Mitt Romney is still terrible: