Kiss My Ass Irene

We're catching the far far edge of the system here in Toronto. Will go down to the beach with the dogs later - the waves will be too big for them but they enjoy the high winds we get at the edge of hurricane systems.

They expect significant rain about 300 km east of here. hamburgboy better know where his rain slicker is.

This is about as close as I'd want to get to one of these storms. We've had enough trouble with tornadoes in Ontario over the past week, we don't need hurricane-inspired tornadoes to create more of a mess.

Where I am the storm is far more entertaining than it is scary at this point. The rain comes down in torrents sometimes and the wind whips up and it just starts to get kicking, and then it'll quit, abruptly. It goes to drizzle and the wind gets calm. It seems like each band of torrential rain comes with its own batch of wind. The calm patches are calm in both rain and wind and the downpours always come with wind. They're like little bands of mini-self-contained storms.

basement's a little soggy, not too bad considering all the pre-irene rain we had yesterday...

R(plan for the worst, hope for the best)P

Plus we have each other.

Hope all you Yankee carpet baggers are safe and made out okay.

New page, new part of the country, new maps and forecasts. Stay safe, y'all!

They eye went over NY 30 minutes ago, and thus the numbers are in...Storm surge 4 foot, gusts of 40 MPH winds, 6 inches of rain, a slight amount of flooding in battery park.

What a horrible storm!...I sure am glad the New Yorkers had Bloomberg around to take care of them, that he had the fore sight to close the city down to keep people safe....his charges are sort of squeamish and none too bright dont you know...

Funny how your facts are different from the official ones hawkeye..

Laguardia reported gusts of 58 mph.

Here's a cool shot taken over your neck o' the woods Bear

I guess I gave you too much credit. You really are that dim.

My brother's neighbor's tree hit the house (the family's fine, the house is fine except for a gutter; the tree's a goner). He lives in Maryland. In NY, my parents and my aunt (they live in the 2 Long Island counties) are both without power. These are folks in their late 70s, 80s. Not evacuated but could go to area High Schools if necessary. My inlaws in NYC are fine but the area is quiet. They are not in a mandatory evac area (too far North) but I suppose they would go to Columbia if necessary, but it probably won't be as they are on the 6th floor and the building has relatively new, double-hung windows.

Am only now starting to hear reports from relatives. One had two trees in the yard fall over (missed the house), another has flooding in the backyard. She lives near a creek in Middleboro by the Oceanspray plant and cranberry bogs. Waiting for word from the one who lives down on the Cape and others scattered throughout the state.

Cuomo, Bloomberg and MTA leaders are doing a full court press trying to sell the story that they were right to shut it down for the first time in history, though it will be awhile before we see if the citizens or transit experts buy the story....we do know that in the past they have been able to operate fairly well through storms worse than this one. They saved a lot of money by not trying though, maybe that will be a good enough reason, but the economic hit caused by the failure to try will certainly be many times what the cost of operating would have been.

I've got a pal from dieting who lives on the Cape and I did see something from her from a few hrs ago. Saw a FB update from a guy in Milton, MA who is without power. Milton is just South of Boston, west of Quincy and not on the ocean.

Technically there are 4, count 'em, 4, counties on the isalnd of Long. Queens, Kings (wherein the borough of Brooklyn is held hostage by whack job Marty Markowitz), Nassau and Suffolk. Four counties which are terminal moraine, glacial deposit if you will. At any rate, sorry to read that your relatives are without power, hopefully LIPA will restaurant it quickly. Curious, are they without because the storm took it out directly or were part of the automatic shutoffs which LIPA made for a few? (I know they cut off Fire Island).

Manhattan, The Village (the real Village, not that wanna be section that calls themselves the East Village), seems fine. Not any apparent damage, moisture seeped in on the one window which has the A.C. but, the scarf I'd placed there, before the rains arrived, sopped that up that liquid. Around 3 a.m. there had been threats by Con Ed to shut off electric to the West Village along with downtown, as far as I can tell that didn't happen. It was breezy and rainy at that hour.


Glad precautions were taken by the Mayor and others, although it did/has become irritating as the updates (in other words, constant coverage) have wiped out all other broadcast programming.

they decided against it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/nyregion/new-york-expects-lengthy-recovery-of-transit-system.html?hp

These clowns must be waiting for the sun to come out before they decide to get to work. Why not, they already have in effect permission from Bloomberg to take their sweet time.

Well, it's all over here except the accusations of hype which are sure to be heaped on the media (and rightfully so to a certain degree).

It started raining hard at 9am and the wind gusted a bit and for a few minutes it looked pretty impressive. But by noon it was all over. At the height of the thing there were a few young girls running around in my back yard splashing in the puddles.

I think the hurricane fell apart very quickly once it went over land, and it seems to have accelerated through here much more quickly than most weather channels anticipated. We were supposed to have tropical force winds and rain at its height between 1pm and 5pm. But it's not even 2pm and it's over. Calm and warm and drizzly. People are out walking their dogs.

The coastal areas may be a different story, but 40 miles inland, this storm was disappointing.

It was Cuomo what issued the order to shut down the MTA, not Bloomy.

There's geographic LI (with 4 counties, 2 of which are NYC boroughs) and political LI (just Nassau and Suffolk).

My father said he contacted LIPA was was told that power would be restored at 7:26 tomorrow morning. Not 7:25. That would be too soon, apparently. I dunno if it was a planned outage but if the restoration is that specific, I'm guessing it was. They are in Suffolk County, on the North Shore. Dunno about my aunt's situation in Nassau County.