US East Coast weather fun ahead

[Evildrider]

Nature has a weird sense of humor.  I mean, if you are going to destroy the Jersey shore couldn't you have done it 5 seasons ago.

[Trippy]

Also this upcoming season 6 is the show's last season.

[ghost]

That's more prophetic than the Mayan calendar.

[Merusk]

What will be the tallest building in midtown has a crane that wasn't battened down and is probably going to fall from 90 stories some time before the storm is over.

Officemate just shared that pic with me and we read up on it a bit.   The crane apparently has been shut-down a few times for violations and improper setup.  Guess cheap and sleazy finally bit someone in the ass.

Unfortunately the buildings surrounding it are only 7-ish stories tall, so if it falls in one piece it's going to wreck something pretty hardcore.

[Goumindong]

firstworldproblems.jpg

Someone should tell her to not worry. In event that her house is destroyed (and not covered by insurance) her father can write the loss off and reduce his tax burden!

[Trippy]

What will be the tallest building in midtown has a crane that wasn't battened down and is probably going to fall from 90 stories some time before the storm is over.

Officemate just shared that pic with me and we read up on it a bit.   The crane apparently has been shut-down a few times for violations and improper setup.  Guess cheap and sleazy finally bit someone in the ass.

Unfortunately the buildings surrounding it are only 7-ish stories tall, so if it falls in one piece it's going to wreck something pretty hardcore.

You would think a tower being built for billionaires wouldn't cut that many corners.

[Kail]

You would think a tower being built for billionaires wouldn't cut that many corners.

[scroogeMcDuck] How do ya think they got to BE billionaires? [/scroogeMcDuck]

[Merusk]

If you knew the amount of corners people cut you'd be as glad as I am that there's a 10x factor of safety in proper engineering designs.

[Furiously]

Don't the foxes go on top?

[Simond]

Pic of NYC sky a couple of hours ago. 



Scary and awesome looking.  Wish it was a better shot but someone did it from their mobile.

Subcreatures! Gozer the Gozerian, Gozer the Destructor, Volguus Zildrohar, the Traveler, has come! Choose and perish!

[Numtini]

And bye bye to power here on cape cod

[Signe]

My sister just said bye bye from near Philly because the lights are starting to flicker.

[Der Helm]

Good luck guys!

[Venkman]

Except for commercial breaks, it's been four hours since I saw election coverage. And I'm happier for it.

Power flicked in my area. And some people in the same town lost power a few hours ago. So far we've been lucky. Definitely buying a generator after this though, even if I only need it as often as my snowblower 

[Ghambit]

Most of my feeds are showing people really now starting to go dark.  I had a report of 80mph on Long Island - winds shifting more southerly now; then power gone.    There's one vector of storm over Long Island thats really causing a lot of problems and it's this one that'll hit NYC real hard overnight, both with wind and surge (driving whatever water has built up right into the Hudson).  Backside is real dry but windy it seems - till she gets ashore and the energy gets transferred to precip.  Then it's a 3-day deluge.

[luckton]

And this is just a Cat 1.  Imagine the horror of a well organized Cat 3+ 

[Rendakor]

Lights are still on here in south NJ; had to go out in the mess to get some branches out of our rain gutters but other than that it's pretty tame here so far. Raining steadily and windy, but not as bad as Irene last year.

[Trippy]

No longer a hurricane. Still packing 85 mph winds. Eye about to reach landfall.

[Ghambit]

King's Point has gone past 12ft of residual tide (this basically means the tide went out, but the water didnt)  and Sandy Hook is around 8.5ft of residual tide now with the strongest onshore flow yet to come.  
As I've expressed before, the tide many times wont go out in storms like this.  The water stays piled up until the next cycle.  So basically the water you see now will be in part excess of the next high tide cycle's range.  All this with the bulk of the storm's surge (which always trails an accelerating circulation) yet to reach the coast.  For comparison, the historical high at king's point was a touch under 10ft.  It's near 13ft now at low tide.

If you're interested in following these tidal streamflows (the non-parsed sites are all slammed):
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/quicklook/data/SANDY.html#8516945wl

[Khaldun]

We still have power. Winds are roaring. Radar shows the eye is moving past Philly, I think, but the winds are still pretty fierce. Most people around us have lost power--our side of the street is still hanging on for some reason.

[Trippy]

We still have power. Winds are roaring. Radar shows the eye is moving past Philly, I think, but the winds are still pretty fierce. Most people around us have lost power--our side of the street is still hanging on for some reason.

Hope you have some long extension cords

Back in 1997 when a huge storm hit the Bay Area there was a similar situation where in some areas one side of the street had power and the other side did not. In some of these places people ran extensions cords across the road to provide power to their neighbors.

[Ghambit]

Hoboken is now part of the Hudson.     Still goin up quickly too.  13.54total, 8.82 residual.  



Lower East Side. (might be fake)

[Ghambit]

And there we have it.  Battery underwater.  Still rising. 

[Numtini]

The wind went dead quiet about half an hour ago. Still no power but the power companys page shows outages going down not up in town.

[Tale]

From this guy somewhere in NYC: http://twitter.com/Timcast

[Ghambit]

Lower NYC is officially flooding.
http://instagram.com/p/RYuVQVG6mq/
http://instagram.com/p/RYnio1s6gf/
http://instagram.com/p/RYnABRRiEo/

[Tale]

Massive explosion believed to be a transformer at the Con Ed Plant, E14th and FDR. This is what took out the power.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAqYZ433TeQ#! (at about 0:25 secs)

More: http://gothamist.com/2012/10/29/lower_manhattan_loses_power_after_p.php

[Ghambit]

Brooklyn Battery Tunnel Flooded <video>

[Ghambit]

Photo is confirmed real.

[Tale]

Photo is confirmed real.

That's usually a statement attached to fake photos. Perhaps best to say why. It was distributed on the Associated Press wire, which probably means it's real.

Just like this one.

[Jherad]

I'm in gloucester county south jersey, and my neighbourhood has been without power for about 4 hours now. Eye of the storm passed us a while ago, and the wind is pretty nasty now. All kinds of crap flying around outside. Luckily the dog is only a little skittish. Cat couldn't give a damn 

[Teleku]

Still have power here.  It briefly flickered off a few hours back, but came back on.  Weather is actually a little better than it was before.  Still no real high winds.

[JWIV]

Just loaned my dehumidifier to a neighbor, since his roof decided that keeping out water was hard.   We've been incredibly lucky so far in this storm here in Baltimore - a lot of wind and water, but nothing like further north. 

[Tale]

HMS Bounty replica sinks - coast guard pic.

[Morat20]

I'm in gloucester county south jersey, and my neighbourhood has been without power for about 4 hours now. Eye of the storm passed us a while ago, and the wind is pretty nasty now. All kinds of crap flying around outside. Luckily the dog is only a little skittish. Cat couldn't give a damn 

When Ike went through, parts of Houston were out of power for two+ weeks. Given how big Sandy is, you guys might be facing a similar problem. Just too much landscape, even with the giant caravans of trucks and equipments that started heading to the coast days ago.

NYC might come up pretty quick, but anywhere else is looking at critical locations first (gas, groceries, shelters) first, and then everyone else slowly over days.

It looks bad, and I'm worried about how many people didn't take this seriously.