Hurricanes Henri & Ida

Henri is expected to make landfall on Long Island, somewhere between Montauk and NYC, Sunday morning.  It's the first hurricane to hit New York since 1991's Hurricane Bob.

It could carry winds of up to 90mph and a storm surge of between 1 foot and 3 feet.  Do you know how much of Manhattan is less than 3' above sea level?  A lot of it.  To say nothing of the subways and utility vaults.

Well, we have thunder and rain, so I guess it's getting closer. Meditation in the park tomorrow morning has been cancelled.

I'm not really worried at this point. It will be inconvenient if the subway gets flooded again, but I think we're only really in trouble if it veers left a bit. If it goes right, we may be having an anticlimax.

Yeah, it rained very hard last night and it's still raining, so some flooding is still possible in spots. But I didn't notice any significant wind.

Henri turned into a tropical storm, before making landfall on the border between CT and RI.  NYC didn't flood.

The Apocalypse will have to wait for another day.

Yankees got postponed, that's upsetting.

That really was some hard rain.

NYC hit with heaviest hour of rainfall ever as Tropical Storm Henri nears

And now Jenni has to get ready for Hurricane Ida. only a tropical storm at the moment, but...

Hurricane Ida forecast to hit New Orleans as powerful Category 3 storm on Katrina anniversary

Not a pleasant forecast for either Louisiana or Mississippi with hospitals and ICUs already jammed with Covid patients.

Ida is one big-ass hurricane. Winds of 130-156 mph could wipe out substantial parts of the city, and leave the rest underwater.

All of New Orleans is without power, and they're saying it might take SIX WEEKS to restore power, with the major damage to power distribution infrastructure and numerous snapped poles.

Six weeks.  Yikes.

Quote :

The hurricane twisted and collapsed a giant transmission tower in Jefferson Parish along the Mississippi River, and the wires fell into the river, causing widespread outages and halting river traffic, parish Emergency Management Director Joe Valiente said. Those lines supplied power to the New Orleans area.

“One-hundred percent of the grid is smashed, hundreds of telephone poles snapped, trees hit power lines and just ripped them out,” Valiente told NPR. He said that the entire power grids collapsed in about 10 parishes and that it could take six weeks to fully restore power.

Hurricane Ida temporarily caused the Mississippi River to reverse its flow.

The only interesting question is "how long until the hospitals lose power and everyone needing oxygen dies?"

Another interesting question: how many billions and billions of dollar$ are worth pouring into rebuilding Louisiana, knowing full well that next year and the year after that the storms will just be getting worse? At what point do you evacuate the barrier islands and river delta lowlands, and plant reeds and cattails instead?

Levees and dikes only direct the floodwaters elsewhere. Spread out the destruction to less well-heeled cities?

Richard, you got power babe?

Yes, no problems at all. It really was a lot of rain, and there was flash flooding in lots of places, even into the basement of our building as the drains became overwhelmed. But the water didn't come into my apartment and we didn't have any power outage, so I just stayed in and slept through the worst of it. After a couple of days, I went to the bridge club, and the subway appeared to have fully recovered. (They were doing repairs and upgrades for years after Superstorm Sandy, and it looks like the system is a bit more resilient now than it was back then.)

Some (gross) good news.

Beached Rat Carcasses Indicate Mass Rodent Death During Ida, Experts Say