Bracing for the Frankenstorm

Bracing for the Frankenstorm

Written 19 October, 2012

I'm visiting Sweetie in Rockland County, New York. We're about 30 miles from New York City, where public transportation has been shut down and 400,000 people have been evacuated from low-lying areas. The city is expected to get hammered by storm surges which will be exacerbated by the full moon.

High winds and large amounts of rain will affect about 50% of the nation's population, and large areas are expected to lose power, which in some cases might be out for as long as a week.

The weather is coming from Hurricane Sandy, which is moving slowly up the Atlantic Coast, where it will soon turn inland. No one is sure just where, but it's clear we're going to get it here at Chez Sweetie.

Last year Sweetie had to leave her house during Hurricane Irene because of the rising river water, which came within inches of the doorways. When the phoned me (I was home in Georgia), I told her to grab her cats and her laptop and get out of her house. She did, and it took her 4 1/2 hours (due to roads closing down) to drive 25 miles to her friends' house, where she stayed for two days.

It wasn't pretty.

This time I'm facing the weather with her. We're stocked up with food and water and batteries and the car is full of gasoline. We don't expect the level of flooding that came with Irene, but it's likely we'll lose power some time Monday.

I'm thinking of going to Whimsy and keying my Damani weather generator to Sweetie's zip code. That will cause the generators to mirror the weather here. In fact, I'm going to go do just that. Now. Before the winds come.