O/T: Sandy

[Doug Winterburn]

Apparently underground utilities have their drawbacks, at least in lower Manhattan!

[Swingman]

And a life changing event for damned sure ... this house I built shortly after is purposely 36" above grade as a direct result of Allison ... be damned if I ever have to go through that again if can help it.

[Leon]

Cant do any thing, what is done is done but by no fault of a potential storm.

And I know this rain ca do a lot of damage, Houston got it 12 years ago.

Not saying that at all, just saying that the way the storm is being described it is most likely over emphasized. It is a storm hitting the US and this is news, make the most of the broadcast exposure as you can.

Whaaat?

[dpb]

On 10/29/2012 8:38 PM, Leon wrote: ...

You can't know that a priori is the point. I don't think NOAA has over emphasized the potential severity a bit...

I've agreed the 24-hr media of all ilks tends to overblow stuff, but that's true for everything from pop culture to politics and everything in between.

If you yourself really mean only that instead of that you don't think there's a thing to see here and that there's not a possibility of some really serious consequences, that's something else.

--

[Greg Guarino]

We live in NY City, in the Borough of Queens. Queens is part of Long Island, which is 10-15 miles wide. We're a good 5-6 miles from the water, so the storm surge won't affect us. But we do get what they refer to as "localized" flooding, as our house is at the bottom of a hill in pretty much every direction. Compared with real disasters, we have had flooding that is more of an annoyance; maybe an inch at the deepest inside the house in the two times it's happened.

So I spent most of Saturday battening down the hatches against such a rain buildup. [it is positively howling outside as I type this, by the way - glad I live in a brick house] I made some plywood barriers for the doors and garage door, so that even if the water did reach the house, it shouldn't be able to get in (very much). We have no basement; the house is built on a slab. I've never seen the water get higher than 8" outside , so I made the barriers comfortably higher.

Here's the Wreck angle:

It's funny the things you learn in a lifetime, and how they can be applied in varying circumstances. I wanted the barriers to make a good fit against the concrete at the bottom and the door frames at the sides. Yes, especially on the sides I used furring strips to mount the barriers and made liberal use of closed-cell weatherstripping, but I still wanted a close fit. The barriers might need to "hold" for twenty minutes or more until the local sewers can carry away the water.

Until quite recently I'm sure I'd have puzzled long and hard about how to accomplish that, and still ended up with a clumsy method and a poor job. But partially due to my occasional visits here, I have made the acquaintance of hand planes in the last year or two. A small block plane made short work of it, taking off just enough, just where I needed it, and with none of the errors that I would undoubtedly made with a saw; the kind of errors that require a "wood-stretcher" to fix.

Planing the edge of 3/4" ply (an old beat-up piece that I've been using as an auxiliary work surface on sawhorses) was no picnic at first, but I tweaked the plane a little in my usual blundering way. I made the mouth wider and the cut a little deeper; too wide and too deep at first, of course. But eventually it felt about right.

At the bottom of the garage barrier, I could see daylight under a part of it. I decided to graft on a piece of 1x3 on the back side, a little lower down than the main piece. At first I figured to let the rubber strip conform to the slight dip in the concrete, but the plane was still on the bench. A few strokes later I had planed the board into a slight curve, which fit the floor nicely.

I learned a year or two ago that planes could be useful, but in a (trying-to-be) "fine woodworking" setting. This incident reminded me that carpenters probably used planes for all manner of less "fine" tasks as well; I can too apparently.

I used some more of my overstock of Kreg screws to put things together, where I would certainly have used drywall screws before. I may yet run through what seemed like a large excess when I first ordered them. They don't "start" quite as easily, I find, but they feel nice and secure, and they don't split the wood.

It's 10 pm here now. So far we have had absolutely no threat of flooding, which is half the reason I put in 10 hours of work preparing

- in a sort of reverse Murphy effect, the universe conspires to make any such work pointless. It simply hasn't rained all that much. But the wind sounds absolutely vicious outside. I'm sure there will be trees down and sundry other problems, with any luck not too bad.

[Swingman]

The very best of staying high and dry to you and your family, Greg.

[-MIKE-]

In May 2010, we got 19 inches in 36 hours in a 1000yr flood that was ignored by most of the media... mostly because Tennesseans were too busy out helping their neighbors and rescuing friends to be pointing their fingers and waiting for uncle sam to come get them off their roofs.

This was all from a regular old line of thunderstorms that just happened to be moving very slowly and in an exact northeasterly path centered right at middle TN. Most of those long diagonal lines of storms move east much faster than north. This one was moving the same speed in both directions, so every storm in the line hit us over a 2 days period.

[Richard]

With Manhattan under water does this mean we are going to have to bail out wall street - again?

[Greg Guarino]

scratch. We got what at least for New York was some truly impressive wind, but very little rain, which was our main concern. A cursory inspection of the house reveals no obvious damage, and we have all of our utilities too. Our electric wires run underground, so that doesn't go out very easily, but I really have to find out what sort of strain- reliefs the cable and phone companies use for their wires. The ones to our house were whipping around violently for hours, but are still working just fine. The floodlights I have in the back yard don't seem to work, so I may be out a fixture, but otherwise everything seems OK.

Now, as for the damage in the greater area, it could be a while before I can get to work (in Manhattan), and then only once the power is restored in that area. But overall, we personally dodged a bullet. For that bit of luck I credit all the preparation I did; Nature has a sense of humor and saw to it that all the barriers I built never even got damp. :)

[Larry Jaques]

Excellent. Congrats on the luck.

Strain relief is usually quite good. They don't like to have to come out to every house to repair those often.

Maybe you lucked out and flying debris only took out the bulbs.

Preparedness is insurance. You hope you never need it, but it's there if you do. Also, Mr. Murphy relies on it. Even if -you're- not prepared, -he- is, and he lets you know without a doubt.

-- No greater wrong can ever be done than to put a good man at the mercy of a bad, while telling him not to defend himself or his fellows; in no way can the success of evil be made quicker or surer. --Theodore Roosevelt

[Leon]

On 10/29/2012 9:14 PM, Greg Guarino wrote: Snip

Good for you Greg, preparation is 99% of the battle in most cases.

[Leon]

I have never brought up NOAA. I am strictly talking national commercial news. I bet nowhere has NOAA described this storm as a "Monster" and or "Frankenstorm", and or storm of the century.

NOAA tells it like it is, the media does not.

The NOAA reports did not seem like any thing out of the ordinary for a relatively minor tropical storm.

For all pratical purposes, a simple tropical depression that lingered for 7~10 days would do far worse damage.

[Leon]

Exactly! The storm you described probably would have been deemed the Frankenstorm, storm of the century, mighty morphin power ranger, oh wait that is another story, had the media had a bigger audience. The more populated the area the worse the description of the storm.

[Leon]

No, It will soon drain all on its own.

[-MIKE-]

I think we need another bailout of Wall Street.

thank you... thank you... I'm here all week. Tip your waitress.

[-MIKE-]

It's better when you add the pizza parlor/comedy club ambiance. :-)

[Larry Jaques]

Yeah, and NOAA tells AGWK like it is, too, doesn't it? Praise be our Saviour, the demiGod Hanson!

-- No greater wrong can ever be done than to put a good man at the mercy of a bad, while telling him not to defend himself or his fellows; in no way can the success of evil be made quicker or surer. --Theodore Roosevelt

[Scott Lurndal]

Your diatribe would have been better had Hanson actually worked for NOAA. In fact, he works for NASA GISS. I think he crossed the line from scientist to advocate many moons ago, but he has no connection to NOAA.

[Lew Hodgett]

-------------------------------------------------------- Congratulations.

Are you anywhere close to the fire in Queens?

Lew

[Greg Guarino]

If you mean the one in Breezy Point, no. While only maybe 8 miles as the crow flies, it would probably take me a half hour to drive there. Breezy Point is on the tip of the Rockaway peninsula, a very narrow strip of sand. While technically part of Queens, you can most easily access that area via a bridge from Brooklyn.