I never liked you. How can one like a one-eyed girl anyway? So Irene passed by and thankfully "only" as a trop storm. It took down lots of trees and with them the electric power. I heard it will take up to Friday to fix it up in Stony Brook?? I hear talking about rebuilding the infrastructures of the US as a way to create jobs and modernize the country. How about a new, smarter power grid? Anyhow, I have been following the storm on the radar and on the wind-meters linked on this webpage until early Sunday morning when the power went out. The wind picked up on the south shore first and the Moriches meter recorded a gust of 80 mph(!) from the E at about 5am. The North shore followed with lots of shacking and falling trees. It was also very clear from the radar that the mainland was to take the most of the rainfall as confirmed by the reports of catastrophic flooding in NJ, VT and parts of NY this morning. By 1pm things calmed out a bit then the wind switched to a very windsurfable WSW breeze. I thought some nut-job went windsurfing West Meadow beach by then. I even considered going to check the situation myself but decided to wait. I'm glad I did because (as expected) the wind turned into a brutal, super-gusty westerly, even worse than the one experienced the previous night. As a result this morning the road to WMB was flooded up to the Old Field Club. I read a windsurfer died yesterday afternoon in the South Bay near Shirley. I'm very familiar with the spot and I might have run in to the guy a few times. That's quite sad and a reminder that these storms are serious business.
Tuesday 8/30 update: LIPA restored the service this morning. Thanks for the hard work guys!!
