Virgil

1) If you live in the United States and you haven’t heard, you must be bound in dungeon with no communication to the outside world. There is a hurricane coming up the east coast with a direct hit to New York City. This is not very common, though if I look at the historical list of NYC hurricanes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ork_hurricanes) I can kind of estimate one every forty years or so.

2) Hurricane Irene is currently a category 1 and expected to stay that way when it hits the NYC area. Category 1 hurricane has sustained winds of 74-95 mph (119-153 km/hr) which is pretty nasty. That doesn’t include gusts which are higher.

3) It has been raining since mid morning here, occasionally heavy but mostly light, but absolutely no wind until about seven or eight PM, and even now at a quarter to nine the winds are not much more than a breeze. 55 mph winds are expected around midnight.

4) I spent the morning getting anything that could be lifted by the wind off my deck and out of my backyard and that of my mother’s house. I took my mother shopping just to make sure she was stocked up. Had my wife stock up on ice cubes in the event the power goes and so no refrigeration. Made sure we had working flashlights and food and water for a few days.

5) New York City made a couple of unprecedented statutes (not sure if that’s the right term): (a) actual mandatory evacuations for those living against the water, especially those against the ocean. That amounted to several hundred thousand people. (b) cessation of all bus and subway service. I have never seen that. Also all bridges will be shut (this is not unprecedented) at some point during the course of the night.

6) Though I live on an island (Staten Island), and people have been evacuated here along the beach area, I luckily live in the center of the island in a hilly area. I do not need to leave.

7) My biggest concern is flying objects smashing out a window. I’ve never boarded up windows and I haven’t. No one around here has boarded them up. I did see a stack of ply wood at the supermarket this morning, which I assume was for their windows. If a window shatters I’m not exactly sure what to do. I’ll have to get some ply wood from the basement and screw it in. God I hope that doesn’t happen.

8) Another concern is toppled trees. There is a possibility of a foot of rain, and we’ve had about a foot of rain these past two weeks. So the ground is soft and will get softer and with the winds the trees are prime for pulling out of the ground.

9) My final big concern is my basement flooding. A couple of things there. The ground is already saturated from the rain of the past two weeks. Though my basement is currently dry, it has had a history of wet spots accumulating, and once for some weird reason, which I never figured out why, I got a good inch or more of flooding that ruined a whole bunch of stored things. Now I do live on a hill, but I don’t live on the top of the hill. Water rolls down toward me. Also if you look at the geometry of the east coast, you have the New Jersey coast line focused toward NYC on one side and the New England land mass focused toward NYC on the other side, which makes a funnel for the ocean aimed straight for us. So as the hurricane pulls the ocean inland it will flood the sewers and back everything up. And the accumulated rain will not have a means to flow out and possibly back into my basement.

10) The eye of the hurricane is supposed to hit us around 12 to 2 PM Sunday. I hear the rain picking up now. I better take the dog out for a her last walk before it gets worse.