Big Sandy The Hurricane

[Rastus]

Where I lived for 30 years in Cape May (2 blocks from the beach) is still dry but should start flooding tonight. The water is up pretty high.

Where I'm at now is about 5 miles from the ocean, 1-1/2 miles from the Delaware Bay. and about 3/4 mile from the canal that connects the two. Not worried a bit. There are plenty of low areas and swampy inlets to take most of the water.

I'm as prepared as I would have been anyway. My point is that they take the worst possible scenario and act like that's the least that is going to happen.
When it's over I'll bet the high doesn't push it in to land as much and the other low tears up the circulation rather than "combining" with Sandy.
Mark my words. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong.

Keep an eye on the storm surge predictions.  Those are usually not too bad...i.e., are more predictable than the direction and strength of the hurricane.

[jaybet]

So guess what?  I was WRONG! Not for me personally...we dodged a bullet because the eye was just north of us so we got favorable winds that fought the surge and we made out with just twigs and leaves in the yard. Northward even ten, twenty miles got slammed, and north of that got thoroughly hammered; devastated. The storm did turn like I didn't believe it would, and one thing that helped us all was that it sped up and zoomed through against predictions. That saved a lot of extra water and longer winds.

Bad scene up the road.

[Rastus]

Just think if it had been 125-130 MPH storm......

[tombogan03884]

It seems to me that the worst damage was not so much caused by the storm, but by poor planning by people who forgot about the hurricane of 1938.
People all along the East coast need to build and plan just like people in Fl or along the Gulf coast.
Hurricanes do not often follow that track, but if you do not plan with the possibility in mind then you must suffer the consequences on the rare occasions when it does happen.

[jaybet]

Current building codes along there require piles and elevations on new buildings that would handle most storms. Problem is, like you said, there hasn't been a superstorm in a long, long time so there was a lot of old construction. A lot of that is now condemnable or just gone.

However...there is some serious surge damage that has no explanation other than, "Day-um!!! Did you see that?"

[Sponsor]

[Jrlobo]

After thoughts: Just think of the people who had the federal flood insurance and vow to rebuild their homes. They will keep doing that until one or two things happen...they die or we taxpayers run out of money! And then there were those who will "ride out the storm" no matter what. They get rescued and we taxpayers foot the bill. Then the President rolls in and says he will cut all the red tape to ease recovery, use Defense Department resources to the great extent, while cutting their budget $500B and facing another $600B in sequestration and cutting FEMA $800B, si guess who is gonna pay for all that recovery easing: the taxpayers, of course. Naturally all the money for any of this comes from China.

I propose we raise taxes on the Chinese and send them Obama as collateral.