Hurricane Irene caused more than $15 billion in damage in 2011. Hurricane Sandy is much wider and will maintain sustained winds for a much longer period of time---possibly two days.
You have a less powerful storm spread over a wider area. Yes it will merge with another storm, but nothing compared to Hazel in the 1950s which was actually 3 or 4 storms merging and even that was brutal for Toronto and other cities, but not that big of a deal and it turned into a Cat 4 or 5 storm. This one won't go beyond tropical storm strength!
But that won't stop them from taking over everything and closing down half the country for several days.
I'm just wondering when Bloomberg is going to order the power turned off "to protect the workers" and the order workers (or more likely the National Guard) to go around knocking down lines and having the media film crews putting those same lines back up again to justify this stupidity.
Today will be officially remembered as the cause of Oct 29th being renamed to "Stupid American Day". The rest of the world will hence forth fly the stars and stripes upside down as commemoration for their stupidity and over-reaction.
This is the side effect of New Orleans. The government incompentents looked bad because they didn't maintain infrastructure for 50 years and then failed to get their heads out of their ass afterwards. The result is Irene and now Sandy being completely over-hyped.
As for Irene, the only significant damage was done in Vermont and that was because VT's infrastructure was completely neglected for almost 100 years because they were too busy paying people to have babies and "chill man" while growing arm pit hair down to their waists and pubic hair to their knees (on the women!) All of the flooding was caused by fixed dams that couldn't lower water levels ahead of the storm and hadn't been improved since the 1930s and water treatment facilities that had no capability to deal with storm water from any sort of serious storm. (Whilmington VT was whipped out because their upstream water treatment facility shared with Dover VT topped and flooded the river downstream... that didn't stop the people of Whilmington from blaming TransCanada who runs the dam downstream from Whilmington and for which there was no flooding at all, for the damage because apparently Americans are so stupid, now-a-days that they can't understand what direction water runs. There wasn't a single case in the entire state of any damage as the result of a privately owned dam or power station or privately maintained water way. NOT ONE and there are dozens in the state. (and no, I don't count power line companies as private agencies, but even they didn't really have that much damage, they just couldn't get to the lines to fix them because the roads were washed out by government incompetence.)
If there is any significant damage from Sandy it will be 100% the government's fault - Either because they're incompetent, or because they manufactured it.
The HMS Bounty replica, built in 1960 for the 1962 film, put out to sea to try to go around the storm. It then lost a generator and much of the capacity of its bilge pumps to the point where the crew abandoned ship and most were rescued by Coast Guard helicopters after having been tracked by HC-130s. Just heard the ship herself was lost and that two crew may still be missing.
There will be many such stories from this storm. For example, the tracks and bridges on the Northern Central Railroad from Baltimore to York, PA were so badly mangled by Hurricane Agnes the line could not be repaired, went out of business, and the corridor today serves as my favorite bike trail. That storm also took out the footbridges at Great Falls and left picnic tables 30 feet up in trees. The flooding at Harper's Ferry resulted in close to the highest water levels in that town's history.
It's not all about severity; a good, long soaking over a wide area can wreak an amazing amount of havoc.
A *lot* is going to change after this, in large ways and small.
And that is why this is a non-event.
ReplyDeleteYou have a less powerful storm spread over a wider area. Yes it will merge with another storm, but nothing compared to Hazel in the 1950s which was actually 3 or 4 storms merging and even that was brutal for Toronto and other cities, but not that big of a deal and it turned into a Cat 4 or 5 storm. This one won't go beyond tropical storm strength!
But that won't stop them from taking over everything and closing down half the country for several days.
I'm just wondering when Bloomberg is going to order the power turned off "to protect the workers" and the order workers (or more likely the National Guard) to go around knocking down lines and having the media film crews putting those same lines back up again to justify this stupidity.
Today will be officially remembered as the cause of Oct 29th being renamed to "Stupid American Day". The rest of the world will hence forth fly the stars and stripes upside down as commemoration for their stupidity and over-reaction.
This is the side effect of New Orleans. The government incompentents looked bad because they didn't maintain infrastructure for 50 years and then failed to get their heads out of their ass afterwards. The result is Irene and now Sandy being completely over-hyped.
As for Irene, the only significant damage was done in Vermont and that was because VT's infrastructure was completely neglected for almost 100 years because they were too busy paying people to have babies and "chill man" while growing arm pit hair down to their waists and pubic hair to their knees (on the women!) All of the flooding was caused by fixed dams that couldn't lower water levels ahead of the storm and hadn't been improved since the 1930s and water treatment facilities that had no capability to deal with storm water from any sort of serious storm. (Whilmington VT was whipped out because their upstream water treatment facility shared with Dover VT topped and flooded the river downstream... that didn't stop the people of Whilmington from blaming TransCanada who runs the dam downstream from Whilmington and for which there was no flooding at all, for the damage because apparently Americans are so stupid, now-a-days that they can't understand what direction water runs. There wasn't a single case in the entire state of any damage as the result of a privately owned dam or power station or privately maintained water way. NOT ONE and there are dozens in the state. (and no, I don't count power line companies as private agencies, but even they didn't really have that much damage, they just couldn't get to the lines to fix them because the roads were washed out by government incompetence.)
If there is any significant damage from Sandy it will be 100% the government's fault - Either because they're incompetent, or because they manufactured it.
... waiting for Krugman to say it is a good thing for the storm to cause damage because it will stimulate the economy...
ReplyDeleteThe HMS Bounty replica, built in 1960 for the 1962 film, put out to sea to try to go around the storm. It then lost a generator and much of the capacity of its bilge pumps to the point where the crew abandoned ship and most were rescued by Coast Guard helicopters after having been tracked by HC-130s. Just heard the ship herself was lost and that two crew may still be missing.
ReplyDeleteThere will be many such stories from this storm. For example, the tracks and bridges on the Northern Central Railroad from Baltimore to York, PA were so badly mangled by Hurricane Agnes the line could not be repaired, went out of business, and the corridor today serves as my favorite bike trail. That storm also took out the footbridges at Great Falls and left picnic tables 30 feet up in trees. The flooding at Harper's Ferry resulted in close to the highest water levels in that town's history.
It's not all about severity; a good, long soaking over a wide area can wreak an amazing amount of havoc.
A *lot* is going to change after this, in large ways and small.