Looking like the East Coast is about to get hit with an unprecedented storm:
As of this morning, hurricane Sandy’s peak winds have dropped to 80 mph (Category 1 hurricane), but that absolutely does not mean the threat to the eastern U.S. has decreased. Quite the opposite, in fact. It is forecast to re-organize and strengthen on its inevitable approach to the East Coast.
All forecast models are now clustering on a landfall between the Delmarva peninsula and Cape Cod. The official forecast from the National Hurricane Center forecasts the center to move over the Delaware Bay with the cone of uncertainty spanning from Cape Hatteras up to eastern Long Island.
Just what we need.
JGabriel
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Hurricane Sandy Public Service Announcement:
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If you live in NYC, use this link to find out if you should evacuate for Hurricane (or ExtraTropical Storm) Sandy: NYC Hurricane Evacuation Zone Finder from the NYC Office of Emergency Management.
Long Islanders can find a storm surge map here.
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JGabriel
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Hurricane Sandy Public Service Announcement Cont’d:
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New Jersey Storm Surge and Evacuation Maps.
Weather Underground has Virgina, Maryland & Delaware Storm Surge Maps here.
Links via Terry Pinder @ DKos.
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John O
I’ve done a fair amount of searching, and I still can’t pin down when the big MF is going to hit? Has anyone been provided that information, or even a window?
Hawes
That squirrel from Spongebob will kill us all.
Maude
Also, isn’t there another storm in the west that can meet up with Sandy?
The trees still have leaves on them.
Fouten
Can we keep the pants-wetting about how this is going to blow the election for us to a minimum? Keep perspective people, Thanks.
Robin G.
I’ve never seen a storm move like this. Never. It’s absolutely bizarre.
East Coastians, rake your leaves ASAP. The last thing you want in 6″+ of rain is clogged storm sewers.
Cole, looks like you better get out the snow shovel.
GOTVers, be prepared to fight downed trees…
Raven
@John O: National Hurricane Center.
AA+ Bonds
Money on landfall in NC
Snarki, child of Loki
Time for Chris Christie, Overlard of Joisey, to head for Florida and stump for the Liar/Liar ticket.
Raven
@Fouten: Are you serious? People here are afraid of what will happen when we WIN!
JGabriel
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National Hurricane Center
NHC 5-Day Day Forecast Cone as of Oct. 26 2012 2 PM.
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muddy
I know only 2 women named Sandy, and both of them are complete bitches. This bodes poorly for me. My apologies to anyone here named Sandy.
I have an enormous maple in my yard which is sickly and now has a long crack down the middle. I am hoping the storm takes it out, as the estimate I got to remove it was $800. I called anonymously to ask the insurance if they would pay to preempt it hitting the house, and they said no. I guess they will be paying more than $800 in the end.
PeakVT
The White House seems ready to act.
AA+ Bonds
Shit maybe the President can blow up that hurricane’s wedding with his killer robots!
John O
Thanks. I believe this means things will still be screwed up by election day, and wonder which way it matters.
Do electronic voting machines work when there’s no power? We’re looking at a possible epic c-eff.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
This brings up some history questions: What is the first documented hurricane in the US? Also, when did humans start acknowledging hurricanes as entities separate from large storms? I bring these up under the question of if at any time earlier in the history of the US did the country ever deal with a hurricane during voting season?
Punchy
Fucking heaven forfend! Not a Cat. 1! Oh noez! Daisy, the trees may lose some branches and car may get wet!
muddy
@PeakVT: My village has not repaired a lot of things from Irene still, just as well if this is going to take them back out.
My dog loved Irene, he’s a digger. He was out there for hours in the rain, digging and digging a mud hole that never emptied.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@John O: I don’t think people have forgotten how to fill in circles, so the loss of electronic voting machines shouldn’t have that much of an impact.
El Tiburon
Is this going to be Obama’s Benghazi? Or was Benghazi Obama’s Watergate? Or was the faux-murder of bin-Laden his Katrina?
Speaking of craptastic disasters: remember Katrina when the head of FEMA was a fucking retard* and Bush was President and he was an even bigger fucking retard?* Anyone remember that?.
*(sorry special olympics dude)
JGabriel
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John O:
Current prediction is landfall in DelMarVa/Phila./Southern NJ around 6-8 AM Tues., but that’s kind of irrelevant. It’s a predicted to be a HUGE motherfucking storm, and the east coast will begin feeling its effects (high winds, heavy rains & massive tidal swells) anywhere between Sunday night through Monday night.
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Cassidy
Woohoo…no tourists at the beach this weekend. I know where I’ll be.
LanceThruster
This is good news for John McCain!
John Weiss
Good luck to you all on the East coast. Here in Southern coastal Oregon all we have to worry about is tsunamis and earthquakes.
Robin G.
@Punchy: It has nothing to do with the wind speed and everything to do with size, rate of travel, and angle at which it hits the coast. The amount of rain alone is reason to worry. Mix in the fact that it’s doing a bump-and-grind with a winter storm and we’re looking at a very serious mess.
Yutsano
@John Weiss: Which, not to curse us, but we’re overdue for both.
batgirl
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
However, if countries/states are planning on electronic voting, they won’t have paper ballots ready.
Brad
I moved to Boston two weeks ago and there’s already been an earthquake, now a hurricane.
PeakVT
In case anyone doesn’t know, when looking at the maps @JGabriel linked to, the area of the greatest storm surge is always on the righthand side of the eye (in the northern hemisphere). In the current situation, with a storm traveling northwest into the East Coast, the greatest storm surge will be to the north of the eye.
billiecat
Hey Cole, if I click on the stinking Romney ad on this site, will the lying liar Mittster have to cut you a check? I’m not going to donate anything, but I’ll click if it “redistributes the wealth.”
JGabriel
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Punchy:
Well, by the time it hits the east coast, it won’t be a hurricane anymore. It’s expected to become an extratropical cyclone that combines the worst aspects of both hurricanes and Nor’easters, with max. coastal wind speeds potentially reaching the Cat. 3 range of 110-130mph.
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Roger Moore
@Punchy:
Remember that the Category of a storm is only loosely related to the damage it does. Category describes the speed of the fastest sustained winds, but ignores other important stuff like the extent of the storm and other meteorological factors that can affect the damage. Sandy is a big worry right now because:
1) It’s quite large for a storm with the wind strength it has, so it will affect a large area.
2) It’s expected to collide with another storm coming in from the west that will increase the damage.
3) It will be hitting during a full moon, which means the storm surge will be added to unusually high tides.
Add those things together, and it could be a very nasty storm.
JGabriel
Thanks, PeakVT, I didn’t know that.
dianne
I don’t get the full moon bit – does a full moon mean a close moon? It can’t mean that it is a whole moon instead of a quarter moon and only 1/4 as big – the moon is still whole just in shadow. Would someone explain that to me?
scav
@JGabriel: That does seem to be a good part of it. This one’s just not conforming to tidy little abstract catagorizatons and insisting on being its own storm and seems to be doing rather well. Precipitation, wind, and storm surge. Damn reality for not coloring within the tidy catagoizations we impose on it!
? Martin
@Roger Moore: Yeah, it’s not the winds that get you, it’s the surge. Ask anyone in NOLA.
Robin G.
@dianne: It means the moon’s gravitational force is combined with the gravitational force of the sun; they’re lined up and pulling in the same direction. Thus the tides are higher.
Brad
@dianne: Tides don’t have (much) to do with how close the moon is to the Earth, just its positioning. It produces the highest tides when it’s either overhead or on the direct opposite side of the Earth (i.e. full moon or new moon)
Brad
NM. I’m an idiot
aimai
I know this isn’t political but I’m supposed to be receiving and sorting a shitload of other people’s junk for a school rummage sale all of next week. That means that parents will be dropping off bags and bags of junk at the school and we will be rushing damp garbage inside,s orting it (and you would not believe what people offer us!) and then piling it up along the walls of the gym. What a delightful prospect!
aimai
trollhattan
@dianne:
Full moon makes it in direct opposition to the sun, meaning the pair have a greater effect on the tides (the sun does have some effect, just less than the moon). Lunar perigee (nearest to earth) is a separate cycle, but when it dows coincide with a full or new moon, tides will be very big.
http://www.fourmilab.ch/earthview/pacalc.html
J. Michael Neal
Just imagine what this would be like if the precipitation were going to be coming down as snow. Or would the storm weaken if it were that cold?
beltane
Was the storm path just updated? I’m looking at Weather Underground and it seems like NYC is going to take an almost direct hit or worse than a direct hit since they’ll be on the right-hand (northern) part of the storm.
? Martin
@dianne: Full moon (and new moon) means the moon, earth, and sun are all in alignment. In a full moon, the sun and moon are on opposites sides of the earth, pulling the oceans along one axis, with no corresponding pull at a right angle to that, so the oceans ‘bulge’ when the moon is (roughly) highest and lowest (there’s a lag). With a new moon, both the moon and sun are on the same side pulling everything in one direction, so tides are highest when the moon is high.
When you have quarter moons, the moon and sun are at right angles to the earth and tides tend to be more even.
Punchy
@Roger Moore: Storm surge may be a prob, I give you that. But I’ve been through about 4 Cat. 1’s and besides some local street flooding and downed branches, they’re no biggie. Just dont understand–besides the novelty of it all to Jerseyians–why everyone is expecting this to destroy civilization east of the Mississippi as we know it.
Schlemizel
Unless the goopers piss all over the recovery efforts this could be a huge boost for the economy! I lived in Florida at the time of Andrew. The state was in bad shape & going to have a nasty shortfall. But a billion in insurance payments, a billion in government aid created a huge spike in jobs and tax receipts.
I’d have more faith in gooper support if the damn thing hit an ex-CSA craphole. They will certainly resent spending a dime helping NY, CN or MA to dig out but we can hope.
As to folks living in the path please take care. Don’t wait until the last minute if you can at all help it. Better to run away when you didn’t have to than to end up under 6 feet of water riding the Gulf current toward Europe.
Comrade Mary
@dianne: Have you ever heard the word “syzygy”? It’s not just a marketing buzzword: the picture in this part of the Wikipedia article on tides sums it up: lining up small (but close-ish) bodies and huge (but far-ish) bodies with the earth means that the earth experiences the most cohesive gravitational pulls from these two sources.
Note that this is all about RANGE.
So full moon = highest gravitational forces on one side of the earth = highest high tides.
New moon = sun cancelling out some of the moon’s gravitational pull = lowest low tides.
Other times: less difference between high and low tides although, as has been pointed out, apogee and perigee can be an additional factor.
delosgatos
@dianne:
dianne, see Spring Tides. (Don’t let the name fool you, they have nothing to do with the season.)
At least the moon is near apogee, so it’s not a Proxigean Spring Tide.
Maude
@Robin G.:
Excellent explanation.
Hey Punchy, did you say something like that before Katrina?
People have been killed by this storm.
People are right to prepare and be uneasy.
scav
@J. Michael Neal: Well, if I,m understand Masters correctly, this puppy is dragging a lot of energy out of the masses of adjacent hot and cold air masses and not out of the ocean (like a regular hurricane) so I’d imagine it’s a fall beast (more like tornadoes) than a winter bearst.
Schlemizel
@J. Michael Neal:
The moisture would still be there so it would be a real nasty dump. the cooler temps might prevent the worst of it from getting that far north though.
How our girls gonna do tonight? Think the Sue will be tougher than the Buckeyes?
Robin G.
@beltane: From what I understand, the two main models are disagreeing as to whether it will be a Delaware landfall or a northern New Jersey landfall. The Delaware one has been steadier.
Allen
In a previous post in a previous thread I alluded to the fact being New Englanders are weather wusses. Nothing in this thread changes my mind on this matter. Just button up and be quite about it.
beltane
@Robin G.: Thanks. We were hit hard by Irene last year so I wouldn’t mind if Sandy passes us by. But a landfall at Asbury Park would be somehow poetic.
Gravenstone
@John O: They were discussing a couple different forecast models this morning. Euro model had it coming ashore in the DelMarVa on Sun/Mon, the US model had it coming ashore in NYC surroundings on Tue. Neither is exactly ideal.
over_educated
Just out of curiosity, why would folks be worried the hurricane would adversely effect the election for democrats?
1. Democrats have a large lead in early voting, if the number of voters is reduced due to the storm wouldn’t that make the early lead even more valuable?
2. Wouldn’t a hurricane more adversely affect suburban and rural voters who have to travel large distances to get to polling places more than urban voters (who tend to vote more heavily democratic)?
RedKitten
Yeah, storm surges are nothing to fuck around with. There are a lot of coastal communities, and some of those communities have been just devastated in the past by these things.
Dr. Omed
Forecast predicts two feet of snow in West Virginia, John. You ready for a winter wonderland? I wonder about how widespread the power outages are going to be, and how long it’ll take to get everyone back online. I live in Kentucky, but I’m checking my emergency supplies out of contagious paranoia.
Seanindc
So i trained for 6 months for a marathon that will be cancelled on Sunday. Fucking global warming…
Poopyman
@dianne At full and new moons the sun, earth, and moon are in a line, and the gravitational pull on the tides is greatest, making for higher high tides.
Comrade Mary
@over_educated: It depends on where you are. Booman is worried about the Philly burbs (heavily wooded) which are a good source of Democratic votes. If the Tucky part of the state isn’t as hard hit, relatively heavy Election Day voting by Republicans could threaten the margin.
In short: this has already been horrible and fatal in the Caribbean: it is probably going to be at least very, very bad for the American east coast, so on both a humane and practical level, prep for yourself and other people, and think about how to deal with worst case scenarios.
RedKitten
I probably wouldn’t be all that worried about it, except that it looks like it’s going to be mixed with snow. This just sounds like nothing we’ve dealt with before, which is why people are so jumpy. If it was a “normal” Cat 1, we’d pretty much know what to expect and could batten down our hatches accordingly. But by all accounts, this is going to be very different. We just don’t know how.
JGabriel
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Comic Relief!
Triumph the Comic Insult Dog at the last debate.
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Maude
@Seanindc:
Sorry. Timing is everything.
Comrade Mary
Heh. I just went over to one of the Metafilter election threads, and the last poster in the thread was: syzygy. Everything’s lining up!
Davis X. Machina
Rural Maine — my NOAA weather-radio outlet is the top of Mt. Washington.
We went 9 days without power last year — 14 total if you count winter nor’easters too.
14 days without power mid-winter in ’98 from the great ice storm.
We average maybe 5, 6 days a year w/o electricity — nor’easters, mostly. I’m well-equipped. Might have to gas up the chainsaw.
When my kids got old enough for family camping, all we had to do was buy a tent. We had everything else already, right down to the stovetop espresso maker. Waiting for the Coleman laptop to come out, though.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@Brad:
You’re going to love blizzard season.
Yutsano
@Comrade Mary: Syzygy is like my favouritest word evar.
Also too: how da moon get dere? U can’t explain it!
AA+ Bonds
The most cost-effective response and the one most likely to receive bipartisan support for funding would be to send drones through the affected areas to annihilate survivors of any age
Comrade Mary
@Yutsano: Syzygy: S…Y…Z…Y…G…Y, syzygy.
Robin G.
@over_educated: The early voting works in our favor. The disadvantage is that a big part of the Democratic base — lower income voters — will be adversely affected. Power outages, blocked roads, etc etc will mean it takes more time to get to your location and then vote. This is less of a problem for people who have jobs they can be late to (ie, white collar). If you’ve got to get from Job A to Job B and clock for your hourly wage, the difference of even a half hour of road blocks or lines might mean you just don’t have the time.
The best solution is probably to get all boots on the ground for early voting this weekend ahead if the storm.
Maude
@RedKitten:
The leaves are still on the trees. If the temps drop, there could be ice as well. You should have seen the streets around here after last October’s storm. Large tree branches were everywhere. Power was out for a week for some people.
Early this morning, people were buying water.
RedKitten
@Allen: Nothing to do with being wussy, and mostly to do with not knowing what to expect from this one.
I’ve handled 30-inch snowfalls and Cat 1 hurricanes. But both at once?
scav
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God: Blizzard season is to be expected. I think Brad’s worried that he’s Brad, bringer of Backbay volcano season.
Ash Can
@J. Michael Neal:
According to what I heard on the radio a little while ago, it will be coming down as snow in places. Especially in West Virginia. To the tune of two feet. If John’s ladyfriend hasn’t bugged out by then, I’d wager she’ll be stuck there for a while. (Which may be why Cole hasn’t been running around the front page screaming and throwing things. :D)
Brad
@scav: I was looking for an obviously ridiculous for Boston natural disaster to throw in there, but came up blank. Volcano works perfectly.
PeakVT
@over_educated: Arguably rural areas will be slower to recover, but in PA and VA the eastern regions (Philly, NoVA, Tidewater) are more Democratic and are more likely to be affected. (MD, DE, NJ, and NY are not at all close at the presidential level.)
As for weather on election day, there’s only been one study, but it indicates that bad weather favors Republicans. This makes sense as Democratic voters are less likely to be regular voters.
? Martin
@RedKitten: Sounds like something the SciFi channel would turn into a disaster movie. Has Hurricane Blizzard already been made into a film?
Davis X. Machina
@Brad: Boston volcano tip: After you shovel the lava to one side, put a chair out on the street, or you’ll lose your parking space.
JGabriel
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over_educated:
Several of the states that are expected to be hit hard, like PA, have fairly restrictive early voting rules. In fact, PA does not have early voting at all, and absentee ballots are restricted to those who have a good excuse, like out of state travel on election day.
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Davis X. Machina
@RedKitten:
I have an electric snow-blower…. hmnnnn.
J. Michael Neal
@Schlemizel: The women play tomorrow and Sunday afternoons. I think the Fighting Whioux? will be tougher than Ohio State but I still think we’ll sweep. Strangely, UND has been playing good defense but is having a very hard time scoring. The twins are the only players on the team with more than three points. It sounds like Michelle Karvinen will be in the lineup for UND for the first time this year but even then I think our defense can hold them down.
Honestly, I don’t think North Dakota was as good last year as most other people did. I think they had the ability to get into our heads and we’d be trying to play the Lamoureuxs rather than the whole team, but I think we’re past that. Not only did we demolish them twice in the playoffs last year, no one that actually played with the twins when they were Gophers is left on the roster.
Gophers win 4-2 and 5-1.
Incitatus for Senate
If infrastructure wasn’t such a dirty word these days, maybe a storm like this could demonstrate the benefits of running our power lines underground. Just ran into an old college friend who lives near Miami, hurricane central, and they have been running power underground for a while. Once you get past the coast downed lines seem like the biggest problem.
Comrade Mary
@Brad: When I was a kid in Montreal, I used to have regular nightmares about Mount Royal erupting (based on an old myth). But are you sure that the Boston area is free of dormant volcanoes who have their alarms set for this fall?
Robin G.
This article pretty well sums up the storm weirdness.
Anything being referred to as a nor’easter with a hurricane inside it is not to be fucked with.
dr. bloor
@muddy: You might want to check the fine print of your policy. You pretty much just told them you’re aware that you have a hazard on your property that you’re not tending to.
Lex
Lot of leaves still on trees in a lot of places. A lot of wet, heavy snow will bring a ton of those trees down, and they’ll take power lines (and cable-TV coax in some areas) with them.
Also, a big, heavy-raining, slow-moving storm can do a ton of damage even without very high winds. If the ground gets saturated, it’s easier to uproot a tree. And a lot of low-lying areas will flood badly. Google what Hurricane Floyd did to eastern N.C. in 1998, when it dumped 18″ of rain onto a coastal plain already saturated by a previous hurricane. It was Ug. Ly.
Michael
@JGabriel: The John McCain clip at 3:17 is absolutely amazing
Schlemizel
@J. Michael Neal:
Yeah, I didn’t see how they lost the game here last year. Made my heart happy the way they embarrassed the twins when UND was on the PP.
Still they scare me more than anyone but the badgers
Todd
Still feeling it in Jamaica. The storm started rolling in for real Tuesday, roared, howled and crashed all day Wednesday, Thursday was actually kind of pretty but red flags were out, and today, the surf and clouds have gotten worse. MFing waves are pounding sand all over the walks, mucking the drains and the breakers are at constant roar.
This hellish trip ends tomorrow, thank god. The staff has been really nice, but about all we cando is overeat and stay shithammered drunk.
I’m just eager for some quiet.
MattR
All I know is I better be able to get on my plane to Amsterdam on Wednesday evening :)
Not really looking forward to this storm since my condo seems to lose power during the mildest of storms. But at least that means I always have candles, flashlights with extra batteries and a corded phone handy. I probably should take a quick inventory of the food situation so I can hit the supermarket tomorrow if need be.
(EDIT: And be proactive with the laundry instead of waiting until the day before my trip)
J. Michael Neal
@Schlemizel: Unfortunately, Monique isn’t playing defense this year. The way Kessel abused her in the NCAA quarterfinal was entertaining.
Do you go to the games at Ridder?
Randy P
Looks like my area near philly is going to get blasted. I’m out of town all week. Did my best to put away loose stuff before I left, but at this point I’m trying to psychologically prepare myself for not whether there will be damage, but how much.
I’m just hoping that huge oak over the house has REALLY good roots.
Sandy M
@muddy: This Sandy hopes that tree of yours can survive this miserable storm. As a nice [aka non-b-word] Sandy who lives near Chicago, let me tell you it is odd to hear my name associated with such a potentially awful scenario! And I have friends and family in her path, so I am hoping for their safety and hoping against hope she doesn’t make that turn back west, but instead goes out to sea. Keeping my fingers crossed!
lacp
Sounds like we may get whacked pretty hard in Philadelphia. Very strange storm.
Heliopause
@over_educated:
If Philadelphia is destroyed that could well throw the election to Romney. Pray it goes farther north toward Boston, because Obama will win Massachusetts regardless and, well, fuck Boston.
ericblair
@Seanindc:
Pretty sure the MCM will be on. Sandy’s supposed to start in on us later in the day. I picked up my race packet today and expect to be running it, although be prepared for some rain and wind.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Punchy: Because the tropical storm experts are calling this another Perfect Storm. It’s not behaving like a normal hurricane, and the winter storm it’s expected to interact with could make this an epic storm.
Mnemosyne
It makes a good election talking point, though — when you have an unprecedented storm heading towards the heavily populated East Coast, who would you rather have in charge of the emergency response, this Republican-appointed guy or this Democrat-appointed guy?
Svensker
@Punchy:
Hoboken will probably be under water. Much of the Jersey shore will probably be under water. Trees in the leafy suburbs tend to come down easily and when they have leaves they come down more often, blocking traffic and taking out power lines. Local brooks and rivers will flood.
My husband was in NJ with his elderly mom during Irene — thank God — and managed to save the electrical systems/heating systems in her basement from being flooded by basically shoveling out the water faster than it was coming in for 4 hours. This in an area not in a flood plain, and with only a few hours of torrential rain. God knows what it will be like if Sandy is worse.
This is really scary stuff.
Allen
I remember in 1995 when we in Portland had a highly incompetent but hugely popular mayor and had a wind storm, one that would rival 1962, forecast. Said mayor urged business to close early (noon). Most did. But unnamed mayor didn’t coordinate with anyone, like our transit system. So everyone was standing around outside (because we didn’t have rush hour buses running) being perfect aiming points for glass raining down on them after being blown out of the high rises. Me, I stayed at work, took do-ables to a nice walled in conference room, went home at usual time, stopped at neighborhood watering hole, and people that left work four hours before me beat me home by at most two hours.
Smiling Mortician
@JGabriel: Robert Smigel is a fucking genius.
muddy
@Sandy M: i’m hoping it will come down, and thus I will be rid of it. I have cleverly stored a lot of items in that corner of the house that are worth a lot, but I don’t care about much, hoping the insurance will pay for them.
Glad to meet a Sandy that is not full on weapons-graden asshole!
Schlemizel
@J. Michael Neal:
Actually we talk at Ridder – I hide online because I do contract work & think my politics could hurt my chances.
I tried to text you last weekend but I guess I don’t have your phone number 8-{D
PurpleGirl
I will bring in the chairs and other items I have on my terrace. Even though I have things bungee-corded to railings, I still prefer to have nothing outside that can be blown around. I’ll do some food shopping in the morning.
muddy
@dr. bloor: No, I called anonymously from an unrelated phone, they don’t know it’s me. I know how to be sly. Youth spent in underground businesses taught me to be sneaky about myself. Actually I would not have bothered calling except I thought they might like the option. They don’t, their loss. I think it’s silly from a business point of view.
muddy
@Sandy M: I lived in Chicago late 70’s and have family there still. What part are you in? My relatives are south suburbs approx 95th St.
Jackie
@muddy:
I had a large tree that lost 1/3 of it’s size in a storm. The insurance paid for the part that was on the ground but would not pay for the rest of the tree that 3 different arborists declared a safety issue, Since the tree was now off balance it was obviously going to go down and either on my house or a busy street next to a park. I specifically got them to say that if it fell they would pay any damages. The agent agreed that it was nuts. I had to wait because so many trees were down and another branch fell and damaged the garage and they paid up with no “but you had a hazard that you knew about” Fortunately I could afford the $2000 to take down the tree before it killed somebody.
Cermet
Went and got 35 gals of fuel for the generators (which were already full. Should last three to five days.) Got standard food supplies (needed anyway) but still have a few days before storm fall so after roof repairs, can relax and watch some fool’s ball sunday.
Sandy M
@muddy: Hoping your tree falls with little other damage (a girl can hope). I am in the NW suburbs (Schaumburg area); been here since the mid-90’s. Grew up in PA and like John, a huge Steelers fan who has grown to like the Chicago teams over the years. I am in IL-08 so I get to vote for Tammy (and will be looking forward to getting rid of the odious Joe Walsh) and President Obama!
thalarctos
@Yutsano:
Don’t forget the volcano.
SiubhanDuinne
@Brad:
Batten down for locusts and frogs. Just sayin.
SiubhanDuinne
@Comrade Mary:
Also plus, it’s much MUCH cooler if you pronounce the “Z” as “zed” (and I know you do!)
S-Y-Zed-Y-G-Y.