Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

I really should read my own blog.

People are complicated. Love is not.

After roe, women are no longer free.

Why did Dr. Oz lose? well, according to the exit polls, it’s because Fetterman won.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

You cannot shame the shameless.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / Another Storm Resource

Another Storm Resource

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The Energy Information Administration has an interactive map of energy infrastructure with storm information. It looks like something that energy nerds could spend some time with even when we’re not expecting major storm disruptions. The graphic at the top of the post is a screen grab. Check out the real thing. Also lots of useful links to energy information on the page.

Open thread, also too.

 

Reader Interactions

163Comments

  1. 1.

    Adam L Silverman

    Good job Energy Information Administration! You’ve posted the targeting data to bring down the US’s power grid.

  6. 6.

    Luthe

    @Adam L Silverman: When I was working for a small town land use agency, we needed maps of a portion of the town’s water infrastructure. It took us a while to get them because they didn’t want the locations of the inflows to get out for security reasons.

  10. 10.

    Walker

    Just talked to my mom again in Wilmington. Refuses to leave. All the old timers remember riding out Hazel as a kid and will not leave.

    Floyd also contributed to her unwillingness to leave. That was a potential CAT 5 forced a mandatory evacuation before dropping to a CAT 3. All she remembers that storm was the problem of returning home (because of traffic, outages) after the storm. Since that one was “overblown” she thinks this one is too.

    Best I could do was to make sure she was ready to leave if necessary.

  11. 11.

    TenguPhule

    @Adam L Silverman:

    You’ve posted the targeting data to bring down the US’s power grid.

    To be fair, the Russians have obviously figured its cheaper and easier to do it all online.

  12. 12.

    TenguPhule

    @Walker:

    All she remembers that storm was the problem of returning home (because of traffic, outages) after the storm. Since that one was “overblown” she thinks this one is too.

    Sorry to be morbid, but you might want to plan for a funeral, just in case.

  13. 13.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Luthe: I’m amazed the stuff that people decide is okay to post and the stuff they decide is not. Stuff that everyone would agree with just a one or two sentence explanation that should be redacted or classified or not on outward facing pages is and stuff that shouldn’t be redacted or classified or is only on inward facing pages isn’t.

  16. 16.

    Spanky

    I was just over at Windy.com and ran the ECMWF model from midday Thursday through midday Sunday. Da fuq?

  17. 17.

    Adam L Silverman

    @TenguPhule: Basically what Al Roker said this afternoon on MSNBC about people who weren’t going to evacuate. He said they should notify their next of kin.

  18. 18.

    Aleta

    On windy (which doesn’t show the outlier models), the forecast for the NA model only goes up to Thur at midnight. It shows the eye still off shore then, but not by much. The point of landfall is southern NC.

    The ECMWF (European) model shows it stalling off shore all day Friday, and lingering off shore most of Saturday. The coastline north of the storm, the barrier islands, is where the storm surge is worst. (since counterclkws rotation). Latest NOAA prediction is for the storm surge to go right over the barrier islands.

    All three predictions on Windy look like Wilmington NC as the direct hit.

  19. 19.

    Adam L Silverman

    Here’s a curated list of meteorology feeds pertaining to Florence by a meteorologist. Could be useful for some.

  22. 22.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Aleta:

    The ECMWF (European) model shows it stalling off shore all day Friday, and lingering off shore most of Saturday.

    This would be very, very bad.

  23. 23.

    Roger Moore

    @TenguPhule:

    To be fair, the Russians have obviously figured its cheaper and easier to do it all online.

    There’s some terrifying stuff out there. I remember a recent article suggesting that the grid would be incredibly vulnerable to hacking of smart appliances. The ideal target turns out to be electric water heaters. Many hot water heaters already allow the grid to control their on/off cycle so they stay off during peak demand and turn back on when demand is slack. If you can hack enough of them and get them all to turn on at the same time, it can create a demand spike that takes down the grid. So it’s theoretically possible to cause a blackout by attacking poorly protected consumer devices rather than the (hopefully) better protected grid itself.

  28. 28.

    Luthe

    @Adam L Silverman: Well, at least they don’t have the GIS shapefiles available for download.

    …no wait, they do. However, it looks like certain locations cease to be visible below a certain magnification level. So instead of “here is the exact location of the energy grid” it’s “here’s the approximate location of this pipeline, but you’ll have to drive around to find it.”

  33. 33.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Adam L Silverman: One thing we sometimes do with visitors to our fair state is take them on a cruise of the lighthouses of Narragansett Bay. The Plum Beach Light still stands; the underlying story is that during the historic 1938 hurricane, the lighthousekeeper and his assistant went to the very top level, broke out the windows so the wind could go through, and lashed themselves to the structure – not to survive, but so someone would be able to find the bodies after the storm. They somehow survived.

    The lighthousekeeper at Whale Rock Light wasn’t as fortunate. The lighthouse was washed off its moorings and sank; the keeper’s body was never found.

    Hurricanes are nothing to be fooled with.

  35. 35.

    TenguPhule

    “If you haven’t changed your mind about a lot of things,” a libertarian economist told me, “you’re not thinking very hard.”

    Certainly I was due for a rethink. I’ve made myself sound rather prescient here, and in some small ways I was — I expressed my first worries in print about a housing bubble in 2002, for example, and I really did ask that banker whether our risk-assessment skills were as good as we thought. But I had no more idea than he did that we were inching toward a precipice. And even when we were at the brink, I remained blind.

    Six months before Lehman, when Bear Stearns was in its death throes, I was aghast at the possibility of a government bailout. No to government interference in the market! Capitalism requires creative destruction! Then the government let Lehman fail, and the money markets started going with it. Looking into the abyss, I discovered an unexpected fondness for government intervention into massive market failures.

    Yet now, 10 years later, I’m surprised to find how little my thinking ultimately changed. I’m still basically libertarian, if a little more willing to countenance intervention in extremis. In this, I suspect I’m roughly typical.

    This has been another edition of Megan McArdle sullying the good name of the Washington Post.

  41. 41.

    JPL

    @Walker: I’m sorry because that puts undue stress on you also. She could lose power for weeks, so hopefully she will be able to maintain some contact with you.

  43. 43.

    Luthe

    @Cheryl Rofer: Very plausible. While I understand the desire for open data (and am sometimes frustrated by the lack of it), there are certain things that should not be easily accessible. The location of major energy infrastructure is one of them.

    @TenguPhule: When you are dealing with a ten-mile blast radius, precision is not that important.

  45. 45.

    JPL

    Don’t forget that the president said that this storm is going to be large and wet. Stay safe out there.

  47. 47.

    Aleta

    According to a modeler friend (not storms) , some of the models show it coming ashore as Cat 2 or 3 or as tropical force winds. I think he was looking at the cyclocane site. We have a friend who just went back to USC last week; so we’re trying to figure out where he lives.

  48. 48.

    Gelfling 545

    I know you’re all awaiting Trumpian wisdom on the situation. Wait jo lnger!

    The President said Florence was “tremendously big and tremendously wet.”

  49. 49.

    NotMax

    @Gin & Tonic

    The aftermath can result in situations just as and even more brutal. Look up Texas Tower 4 sometime.

    IIRC, that was after Hurricane Donna, which I clearly remember (Hazel I have but fuzzy memory of) – AFAIK the only hurricane since record keeping began which traveled over all 13 eastern seaboard states.

    I also well remember Camille and Agnes, which were no picnics either.

  51. 51.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Gin & Tonic: Aquaman’s father is human, his mother the Queen of Atlantis. His father’s name is Thomas Curry (misremembered it up above) and is the keeper of the lighthouse at Amnesty Bay, which DC comics has located, at different times, in both Massachusetts and Maine.

  63. 63.

    MagdaInBlack

    OT: Whats up with the latest bs about Strzok-Page texts? I only see it on Fox news headlines.
    Much ado about nothing? Again?

  64. 64.

    Roger Moore

    @Luthe:

    While I understand the desire for open data (and am sometimes frustrated by the lack of it), there are certain things that should not be easily accessible. The location of major energy infrastructure is one of them.

    I’m going to mildly disagree. Major energy infrastructure is essentially impossible to hide, especially now that anyone who wants can access aerial and satellite imagery. Trying to hide it just makes life difficult for people who genuinely need access to that information without seriously impeding anyone who wants to attack it.

  66. 66.

    Adam L Silverman

    @MagdaInBlack: I’m very impressed with what I’ve seen in the trailer and what I’ve seen written about the movie so far. Jason Momoa has embraced the character. And despite the popular conceptualization of the character that took hold with the SuperFriends cartoons in the early to mid 70s, the character has usually been far more interesting in the comics.

  69. 69.

    Aleta

    @Walker: What you said made me think about my mother. Maybe one of the brain changes when some people get older is that it becomes nearly impossible to organize the activity and organize the brain in the way needed to leave. I noticed it got harder and finally impossible for my mother, who’d left to go to her cabin every summer for over 50 years. And it’s harder to handle the uncertainty of travel; as one loses the ability to improvise, the 100 little decisions just become traumatic. So a natural response would be to avoid the stress and rationalize a reason. From a perspective of stress and anxiety, it was like my mother didn’t really choose–her brain chose what it thought was the best way to survive.

  70. 70.

    Chip Daniels

    @TenguPhule:
    Reminds me of that scene in The End, where Burt Reynolds is drowning, and begs God for help, promising to give all his worldly goods to the poor.\As he nears the shore, he keeps revising the figure downward, until finally he is safe on the beach and promises to give a few bucks when he can.

    A liberal is a conservative/ libertarian who has been laid off or arrested.

  72. 72.

    Adam L Silverman

    @MagdaInBlack: Yes. Basically someone leaked a batch of texts that talk about DOJ/FBI strategy for leaking. This is a reference to the strategy to prevent leaking. Congressman Meadows (R-Covering Up for Gym Jordan) tweeted them out claiming this was part of the DOJ/FBI conspiracy to leak. If he’s saying this stuff and knows better he’s scum. If he’s just this dumb, which, I think, is a possibility, then he’s got no business dressing himself, let alone being in Congress.

  77. 77.

    TenguPhule

    @Adam L Silverman:

    If he’s saying this stuff and knows better he’s scum. If he’s just this dumb, which, I think, is a possibility, then he’s got no business dressing himself, let alone being in Congress.

    Por Que Los Dos?

  82. 82.

    Adam L Silverman

    @JPL: I think the last one was during the primaries is when he talked about the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as a land deal during one of the debates.

  83. 83.

    TenguPhule

    The U.S. budget deficit is reaching levels that are abnormally high for a robust economy, and lawmakers from both parties are proposing ideas that would make the deficit swell even further.

    The government spent $895 billion more than it brought in from taxes and other revenue sources during the past 11 months, the Congressional Budget Office said this week, a 33 percent increase from one year before.

    Typically, the deficit shrinks during strong economic times, as the need for costly government support wanes and tax revenue rises. In 2000, the last time the unemployment rate was at its current level of 3.9 percent, the government ran a surplus, meaning tax revenue eclipsed all spending.

    The dynamic is much different now.

    Corporate tax receipts fell 30 percent in the past 11 months, the CBO said, precipitated by the large reduction in rates from the massive tax overhaul passed by Congress last year. Spending levels have risen sharply as a result of a bipartisan agreement to shed budget caps put in place to maintain fiscal discipline and pour more money into both military and domestic programs.

    File Under, No Shit Sherlock.

  84. 84.

    Aleta

    @MomSense: My friends did that once. They had raised sheep for wool on another island. The year they had to give it up, to move to Boston for medical care, they went to Nash as a way of saying goodbye to that life.

  85. 85.

    Adam L Silverman

    @TenguPhule: Don’t know about that. Wonder Woman was a solid movie, especially what DC had been putting out prior to that. My understanding is that Justice League was just a mess, as was Suicide Squad. But Wan has control over Aquaman like Jenkins did for Wonder Woman and will have Wonder Woman 2. Snyder is gone. Whedon isn’t involved. So I’m in trust, but verify mode. Same with the Shazam movie they’re doing.

  86. 86.

    MomSense

    @Aleta:

    Accessing medical care can be tough when you live in a rural area – lots of driving and expense. The islands are so seductive, though. It must have been tough for them to leave.

  87. 87.

    raven

    And in the 29 years since Hurricane Hugo struck, the population of the coastal Carolinas has skyrocketed.
    “There’s 25% more people living between Charleston (South Carolina) and Morehead City (North Carolina) than there were when Hugo was making landfall,”

  91. 91.

    TenguPhule

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Agree that Wonder Woman was the exception to the rule. Right actors & actresses and a script that paid at least some detailed attention to the comic’s more arcane history.

    Same with the Shazam movie they’re doing.

    This one I fear is going to be a Kazaam. Most of classic Shazam was weird but not very action comic movie compatible. If they try to grim-dark it like Superman, they’ll completely fuck it up.

  92. 92.

    MomSense

    @Walker:

    I’m really sorry. I can imagine how worried you must feel. Have you tried telling her that staying may risk harm to the rescuers and responders? Maybe if she connects her evacuation to keeping the responders safe she will change her mind.

  94. 94.

    Steeplejack

    My hurricane prep is done. I met with the cat wrangler and went over every issue we could think of. It turns out that she lives not far away, so she shouldn’t have any problem getting over here every day, even with torrential rain, maybe a power outage and some downed trees. I don’t think we’ll get more than that in my corner of NoVA. Although, don’t get me wrong, that’s bad enough! We even discussed what to do if the water goes out.

    Right now I am finishing the most critical pre-trip task: washing the housecat’s sheepskin bed throw. She will be spending a lot of time there while I’m gone; it’s her “bunker” and truly a security blanket. It had a long soak and a gentle wash cycle, and now it’s being artisanally dried in the dryer. She is beside me at her workstation and is none the wiser so far.

  95. 95.

    TenguPhule

    @MagdaInBlack: Japanese comics are superior to American comics because Japanese series have enough sense to eventually end and start new ones, not constantly reusing the same characters over and over and over again. Fight me.

  96. 96.

    Adam L Silverman

    @TenguPhule: From what I’ve seen so far it is not dark at all. The descriptions so far have been to capture some of the charm of Big in a superhero movie. My only issue is I wished they’d have gone with Alex Ross’s take on the classic costume and not the New 52 version of the costume, but that’s just a quibble.

  100. 100.

    John Revolta

    Imagine if, with the economy so robust and all, imagine if there was some way to, I dunno, PAY DOWN the deficit!!??

    I wonder, has such a concept ever been attempted?

  101. 101.

    TenguPhule

    @Adam L Silverman:

    The descriptions so far have been to capture some of the charm of Big in a superhero movie.

    Which is probably going to greatly disappoint the target audience.

  102. 102.

    Aleta

    @MomSense: The ferry tickets needed for regular medical /dental trips for an island family are one thing — at least it can be combined with shopping, etc. Though it takes impressive organizing to pull off on a turnaround ferry schedule, including getting the car off and on again. Then something comes along that’s 2-3x a week, like physical therapy or stroke rehab or weekly chemo. That’s a lot of tickets, esp if you have to bring the kids, and the state doesn’t sell multi-passes or medical discounts. When all jobs were self-employed, no medical group plans until the ACA.

  104. 104.

    NotMax

    @TenguPhule

    “Psst. Follow me into this abandoned subway tunnel, little boy.”

    ;)

    Trailer looks as if they trying to respect the whimsicality of the source material. Wish they hadn’t so minimized the traditional filigree on the Big Red Cheese’s cape, though.

  106. 106.

    Adam L Silverman

    @TenguPhule: Who knows. At this point I think the audience is divided into three groups: 1) those that have read the comics, like the characters, and just want to see an enjoyable movie adaptation, 2) the hardcore, rabid types that write comments at various comic book and movie sites who are either over invested in Snyder or over invested in a specific run of the comic book and just suck the joy out of everything, and 3) people that have a passing to no familiarity with the comics, have absolutely no familiarity with the rabid fanboys, and just want to see an enjoyable movie.

  115. 115.

    Mike E

    @raven: I was in Charlotte just in time for Hugo…it removed 40% of the city’s tree canopy; it destroyed George Martin’s AIR Studio in Montserrat, earlier

  117. 117.

    Adam L Silverman

    @NotMax: Actually I’m large and dense. I’m designed to pick up large items in one place and put them down in other places. I’m not built for speed.

  118. 118.

    Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho

    Some of the morons are friends of mine going back 35+ years. I sent each a request to report that they were okay, “ideally inland” and both told me “we’re not planning on leaving” and the live on Isle of Palms. Fools. One son is in Savannah, and the younger one is actually here this week visiting his grandmothers instead of in Charleston.

  119. 119.

    MagdaInBlack

    Last fall, a friend moved from Hudson, FL to Elizabeth City, NC……..I can almost hear her cursing from here in Chicagoland.

  120. 120.

    Aleta

    @Steeplejack: artisanally dried

    She’ll miss your ministrations. Maybe you should make recordings of your voice. Or face time her.

    We had a cat who, if you left for a week, would pointedly turn his back on you for the first hour or so after you came home. Once I set him up to face time with my partner in Europe. Turned his back to the screen.

    Have a great trip. The desert is beautiful.

  121. 121.

    Adam L Silverman

    @TenguPhule: That’s been canon since the 90s. Once they collapsed the multiverse in Crisis, Earth-S(hazam) ceased to exist. So the Rock of Eternity stopped being a multiversal gateway and became a pocket dimension where the Wizard Shazam lived. Basically the subway tunnel gets Billy access to the Rock of Eternity.

    ETA: They basically collapsed the Rock of Eternity back into a retcon of the original origin story from Whiz Comics. When Captain Marvel was added to the Justice Society books in the late 90s and early 00s they used to subway to get access to the Wizard. This included one of the JLA/JSA crossover Virtue and Vice
    https://www.amazon.com/JLA-JSA-Virtue-Unnumbered-Paperback/dp/1401200400

  126. 126.

    Gin & Tonic

    @GregB: He’s not losing. He’s getting smoked, crushed, obliterated. As of now, Chris Pappas has 10,700 votes. Levi Sanders has 380.

  131. 131.

    Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho

    @raven: So Charleston’s gonna be fine? It’s going that far north? I have’t followed closely enough due to work wildness,

  136. 136.

    Adam L Silverman

    @NotMax: He’s only interested in doing more serious parts these days. He’s holding out for the next Kenneth Branagh adaptation of a Shakespearean play.

  138. 138.

    Adam L Silverman

    @NotMax: Also, it’s more of a strawberry blonde. Besides, if Wolverine can be 6’2 in the movies, they can go with a black haired Sasquatch for Alpha Flight.

  139. 139.

    raven

    @Aleta:

    Though it might seem callous to leave the horses so exposed—especially because they’re charismatic, and a popular tourist attraction maintained by a government organization—the animals really do seem better off in the storm than being nannied by human caretakers. “You’re going to lose some to a terrible storm, but you’re not as many as you would if you tried to help,” McDonnell says. “When the Bureau of Land Management rounds up and transports feral horses out west, they plan on losing 5 to 10 percent to injury or stress-related death.” Wild horses panic when they get rounded up and transported. Because, again, they are wild. Plus, round ups tend to tear apart social groups and separate foals from their families. That’s a big neigh-neigh.

    https://www.wired.com/2016/10/north-carolinas-wild-steeds-bucked-hurricane-probably/

  140. 140.

    Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho

    @raven: I figured the kid in Savannah would be good; it’s his idiot parents staying on Isle of Palms that makes no sense. They’re from Ohio and they’ve not been through a bad storm since they moved there.

  141. 141.

    Steeplejack

    @MomSense:

    Just sticking this in here as a convenient point, not replying to your comment directly:

    People never seem to grasp the difference between (1) “Boy, do I feel stupid stuck in traffic after evacuating from that hurricane that turned out to be not so bad!” and (2) “Boy, do I feel stupid drowned and dead in a ditch because that hurricane turned out to be just as bad as they said!”

  145. 145.

    L85NJGT

    @TenguPhule:

    The official line is the The W32.Blaster worm had nothing to do (directly) with the August 14 2003 Northeast blackout. In theory, the C&C traffic should be on an air-gapped, encrypted and dedicated network.

    In the real world, process control systems are often a vendor kludge, on an out of date OS, so any patching is not timely, and an all around headache. Workers take shortcuts, bosses try to save a few bucks, and shit happens.

  146. 146.

    Jeffro

    @Adam L Silverman: Wait…an Alpha Flight movie?!?

    AF is one of my oddball faves (1st series only though, please). The mammoth ‘John Byrne’s Alpha Flight’ collection that came out just a while ago is so complete, it’s amazing.

    /AlphaNerd

  147. 147.

    Steeplejack

    @Aleta:

    I do love the desert. My formative Boy Scout years were spent in the wilds of west Texas—different from the desert around Las Vegas but similar in some ways. I love the quiet.

  148. 148.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jeffro: It’ll be up to Feige. Alpha Flight is considered a mutant property, so it was controlled by Fox under the same rules that they controlled the X-Men. Now that Disney is buying Fox’s movie and TV studios and catalogues, the rights will revert to Marvel, which is a Disney C subsidiary. Then it is up to Feige, who runs the Marvel cinematic side to figure out what to do with them.

  149. 149.

    NotMax

    @Adam L. Silverman

    the rights will revert to Marvel, which is a DC subsidiary.

    Unfortunate phrasing there.

    @Jeffro

    When Byrne was good, he was very good indeed. But when he was bad he was horrid.

    (Apologies to Longfellow.)

  150. 150.

    Jeffro

    @Adam L Silverman:

    the rights will revert to Marvel, which is a DC subsidiary.

    Say what now? lol

    Anyway, here’s hoping that if it comes to pass, they either do a super-condensed version of #1-17 (do-able!), or do #23-29 with lots of well done flashback scenes.

  151. 151.

    Jeffro

    @NotMax: The horrid stuff was…? I think it must have been my impressionable years, but his X-Men, FF run, AF, and Iron Fist was great. Even MTU.

  152. 152.

    Bill Arnold

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Good job Energy Information Administration! You’ve posted the targeting data to bring down the US’s power grid.

    Interesting. It used to be that looking for such material online (it was there) would get the seeker some scrutiny, though what I see is missing some key information (e.g. substations).
    Wondering now how much they are logging…
    Get a few million people (or bots) to open e.g. the base page https://www.eia.gov/state/maps.php would make those logs next to useless.

  154. 154.

    Adam L Silverman

    @NotMax: @Jeffro: Sorry, crossed circuit. It’s been a long Rosh HaShanah.

    Which, if you think about it, would make for a great Ragman graphic novel. Ragman: The Long Rosh HaShanah.

  155. 155.

    NotMax

    @Jeffro

    Great Lakes Avengers? Really?

    Hulk: Chapter One. ’nuff said.

    And that’s without getting into the whole Man of Steel kerfuffle.

  157. 157.

    Adam L Silverman

    @NotMax: That would work too. Or you could run it on the Marvel side as an FF story. The Thing: The Long Rosh HaShanah. Or Shadowcat: The Long Rosh Hashanah.

    Or got back to DC and make it a Legion of Superheroes story. Colossal Boy: The Long Rosh HaShanah.

  159. 159.

    J R in WV

    I was in Mobile Bay, ALA for Agnes, my ship was in a floating drydock for hull work, part of a major shipyard overhaul. So it was very high, far more exposed to the wind than usual, which as tall as the ship was, normally large sail area was become huge.

    We put every piece of cable, hawser, rope from the ship to the drydock, and from the drydock to the piers on the sides of the drydock.
    Tightened some of them with big capstan winches. Still scary.

    As the rain began, all the porthole covers, steel covers over the inside of already thick glass were bolted down, but for a couple on the lee side of the ship. Guys stood in like to peer through the few portholes, but all you could see was the waterfall of rain pouring in a deluge from the decks above.

    No hard to the ship, but a very restless crew for the whole experience. Agnes actually made landfall between Pensacola and Mobile, where, in 1972 there was very little development as yet, mostly miles of grassy saltwater swamps. As close as I need to get to a hurricane.

    Interestingly, Agnes followed the eastern side of the Appalachian mountains north-north-east and killed lots of people in PA and VA from flash-flooding days after it made landfall near me, from WV. Wife was in Key West as Agnes passed by in the Florida strait, there were hurricane parties in boarded up bars, and a few tornadoes, she too was nervous but unharmed.

  160. 160.

    Mart

    @NotMax: A group of my H.S. friends and I would ride our bikes out of Pittsburgh to the ring of Pennsylvania State Parks that had dams built for flood control after the great flood of 1936. I forget which one we were at in 1972 when Agnes stalled over Pennsylvania. They had all the gates full open, and the spillway was rock’in. I was 14 and had fleeting thoughts that it would be cool to watch the wall collapse, but also had been taught about the Johnstown disaster,so I put those thoughts away.

  161. 161.

    NotMax

    @Mart

    Was in NE Pennsylvania during Agnes. We drove through the inundation to watch the all the floodgates at the dam holding back Lake Wallenpaupack open for only the second time ever. Wind-whipped water was still overtopping the dam.

  162. 162.

    Aleta

    @Steeplejack: In my 20s I had a broken heart and came to feel the only way to cure it was to go west and hike/camp alone into the desert for awhile. I went to NM and ended up going to Big Bend. I walked in for some days, walked out. No cure but unforgettable.

  163. 163.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Adam L Silverman: Security Through Obscurity rarely works and can backfire.

    I had to do some server upgrades in a bank facility. I wasn’t told what sort of facility, for “security reasons”. I was given a postcode (obUS: zipcode) and not much else. I spent an hour driving around a residential area looking for bank signs which weren’t there “for security reasons”. Eventually we stopped and asked a local. “Oh, the bank cash place? It’s over there.” He pointed to some fenced-off and unlabelled buildings which I had taken to be a juvenile prison or similar facility. It was the place where the security vans from businesses brought millions of pounds every day to be sorted and collated by the bank. It’s not like any crooks who wanted to rob it wouldn’t know what it was and where it was, the locals often worked there as cleaners and janitors or even cash sorters and knew what it was.

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