Hurricane Sandy

[Walkman]

How dare you!  The CAP Core Value of Respect requires you not show such disrespect to people who wear tin-foil hats, or indeed, even think such disrespectful thoughts (without showing same), as Respect is an absolute value and must be lived in thought, word and deed at all times.  I demand your immediate 2B for such violation!

hangs head in shame...

[SarDragon]

How dare you!  The CAP Core Value of Respect requires you not show such disrespect to people who wear tin-foil hats, or indeed, even think such disrespectful thoughts (without showing same), as Respect is an absolute value and must be lived in thought, word and deed at all times.  I demand your immediate 2B for such violation!

hangs head in shame...

And to think I just friended you on FB. Now I'm going to have to spend all night reevaluating that. 

[AngelWings]

Parts of MA are evacuating certain parts of their town. My town has two neighborhoods being evacuated and good god all mighty, I've never seen flooding like I have today.

[Walkman]

And to think I just friended you on FB. Now I'm going to have to spend all night reevaluating that. 

LOL!

[Eclipse]

To get things back on track.

I have a colleague who was in DC yesterday, staying in Baltimore, who had to move his hotel 30 minutes West as his hotel was closed.
At ~1900 local time, the winds were driving rain into his closed hotel windows.

[Eclipse]

So...

AT 2230 local, I'm trolling the web cams.

Times Square is just wet streets and no wind, Myrtle Beach, SC is just windy, Boston shows fog, Atlantic City's current NOAA conditions just show "mist and fog".

Now, the Brooklyn Bridge and Wall Street cams appear to be down, and I saw a news story about "everything below 39th being dark", but was that preventative shutdowns or outages?

Was Sandy just a really bad storm coupled with uber hype?

Edit: I'm looking over some CNN photos - I see a fair amount of flooding, and that construction crane in NYC - supposedly that went down
in 20MPH winds with 30MPH gusts.  In Chicago we refer to wind like that as "balmy".

[Phil Hirons, Jr.]

Rhode Island getting ready for post storm damage assessment.

How is it in Rhodie? I know here in MA it isn't too bad, at least not bad near the coast.

Glad I'm in the north half of the state. The Providence Hurricane Barrier seems to have worked.

[Huey Driver]

All of the island communities of NJ were wrecked today with the tides... attached is one picture to show the extent of flooding and one from Atlantic City to show damage.

These pretty much sum up the status of my community right now.

[spaatzmom]

So...

AT 2230 local, I'm trolling the web cams.

Times Square is just wet streets and no wind, Myrtle Beach, SC is just windy, Boston shows fog, Atlantic City's current NOAA conditions just show "mist and fog".

Now, the Brooklyn Bridge and Wall Street cams appear to be down, and I saw a news story about "everything below 39th being dark", but was that preventative shutdowns or outages?

Was Sandy just a really bad storm coupled with uber hype?

Edit: I'm looking over some CNN photos - I see a fair amount of flooding, and that construction crane in NYC - supposedly that went down
in 20MPH winds with 30MPH gusts.  In Chicago we refer to wind like that as "balmy".

The crane was hit by 90 mph winds with gusts over 100mph when it went over.

Tunnels and subways were flooded.  Some power areas were shut down others were outages.  A power plant suffered an explosion in their basement when it was flooded several workers are trapped hopefully higher in the building, though Con-Ed is denying any of it.  I don't know about that the video is pretty convincing.  Long Island is in for a long night as the basin fills with flooding and the storm surge, most likely will end up with a different inter-coastal landscape.

So overall these are but a few of the stories of Sandy.  I would say that it was/ is an extremely unusual and strong storm requiring a large amount of media warnings considering its large size, over 900 miles in diameter, number of states directly hit, and density of population.

[EMT-83]

Fire departments along Long Island Sound are receiving calls from folks wanting to be rescued; they were too dumb to leave when the mandatory evacuations were ordered.

Lots of flooding, but the water is receding faster than predicted. We'll see what things look like in the daylight.

[Eclipse]

The crane was hit by 90 mph winds with gusts over 100mph when it went over.

I saw some of those reports, and don't know how they are figuring speeds that high - per NOAA, at no point has Sandy developed winds that high.  The max gusts of the whole storm have "only" been to 90 with sustained winds at 75 - nothing to trifle with, clearly, but not what some sources are reporting.

The crane was knocked over around 1430 local time when the storm was still gathering speed and winds were much lower.

[Eclipse]

Fire departments along Long Island Sound are receiving calls from folks wanting to be rescued; they were too dumb to leave when the mandatory evacuations were ordered.

I love Christie - he was being pretty "direct" about the Mayor of Atlantic City who told people to stay put in local shelters.  As well as telling people
that if they did stay, after being told to leave, they were on their own for a while.

[SarDragon]

The Weather Channel reported earlier that the runway as La Guardia was under water.

No report from Laura Reichardt, she's by NYU, west of East Village, about 40 blocks south of Times Square..

[spaatzmom]

The crane was hit by 90 mph winds with gusts over 100mph when it went over.

I saw some of those reports, and don't know how they are figuring speeds that high - per NOAA, at no point has Sandy developed winds that high.  The max gusts of the whole storm have "only" been to 90 with sustained winds at 75 - nothing to trifle with, clearly, but not what some sources are reporting.

The crane was knocked over around 1430 local time when the storm was still gathering speed and winds were much lower.

Not sure how the skyscrapers affect the wind, but I know there is a phenomena where they create faster and more dangerous winds.  There have been a couple of meteorologists that stated their wind meters, probably Kestrels, broke during that particular time in that area with 90mph as the last measurement showing on the meter and another with over 100mph during a gust on his. 

As far as never developing winds that high, that is not true.  At about 3:00 p.m. EDT (1900 UTC) on October 24, Sandy made landfall near Kingston with winds of about 80 mph (130 km/h).  Just offshore Cuba, Sandy rapidly intensified into a Category 2 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale with 110 mph (175 km/h) winds.  Shortly thereafter at 1:25 a.m. EDT (0525 UTC), the hurricane struck Cuba just west of Santiago de Cuba.  At landfall, Sandy had a well-defined eye of over 23 mi (37 km) in diameter, and flight-level winds reached 135 mph (216 km/h).  Granted this was prior to hitting the US, but it did reach those speeds during its life cycle.

[SarDragon]

Skyscrapers make great wind tunnels. Wind speeds increase significantly when blowing down the streets between modest (6-10 floors) buildings. There have been instances of the windows getting sucked out of buildings because of this.

[spaatzmom]

Skyscrapers make great wind tunnels. Wind speeds increase significantly when blowing down the streets between modest (6-10 floors) buildings. There have been instances of the windows getting sucked out of buildings because of this.

Yup the Hancock building in Boston comes to mind.  It was forever popping its windows making walking around that area interesting until they figured out some extra structural thing to reinforce the windows.  Glad I didn't have to travel into Boston that often back then.

[JeffDG]

Skyscrapers make great wind tunnels. Wind speeds increase significantly when blowing down the streets between modest (6-10 floors) buildings. There have been instances of the windows getting sucked out of buildings because of this.

The Venturri effect, writ large.

[RiverAux]

Okay, I certainly don't expect there to have been much CAP activity associated with the hurricane up till now, however, when NHQ puts out a "preparation" press release on the 26th http://www.capvolunteernow.com/todays-features/?preparations_begin_as_hurricane_sandy_heads_toward_east_coast&show=news&newsID=15171 you'd expect them to follow up with daily updates. 

I suspect that the reason we didn't hear anything over the weekend is that they don't work weekends -- an often noted problem in regards to NHQ public affairs and emergency events.  But, there should have been something yesterday. 

Now that most of the storm has passed we might really expect to see some CAP work and I'd hope it gets covered. 

[Eclipse]

Amazing how the storm is basically evaporating over the Great Lakes.  No rain in the forecast East of Lake Michigan, even though the storm's edge
is making things windy.

[SARDOC]

I too am surprised that they haven't been continually issuing press releases about what is going on daily, unless of course Civil Air Patrol isn't doing anything in these states.  Which I know isn't true, but that is the impression I get when there is no news and they have put restrictions on all the Civil Air Patrol personnel to not release any information in the areas impacted by the storm without clearance from National Public Affairs.  You'd think in return they would be on top of this and continually be issuing statements.  Unless of course, due to OPSEC requirements the spying we are doing for FEMA needs be kept confidential....I think I've already said too much.