If you haven't noticed cyclone/TS/hurricane Nadine, you can join the story any time.

The poor thing has been wandering the Atlantic basin for over two weeks and shows no sign of blowing down. It's stuck in a short wander just off the shoulder of Africa.

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/graphics_at4.sh ... l#contents

And how many minor, seabound 'canes get their own Scottish Wiki page?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_ ... %282012%29

And your interest is...? This seems to be the original tempest in a teacup.

I've watched the NOAA hurricane pages each season, for a number of years. Partly out of curiosity and in recent years out of specific self-interest. (I was prepared for Irene and figuratively rocking on my porch while my neighbors sent families out of state, cried "My ATV for a generator!" and fought bloody hand to hand combat for the last brick of D-cell batteries.)

It's not news. It's not from another planet. It's not another example of man's (or gummint's) inhumanity to man. It's just amusing.

18 days and counting. It might creep up on John, a Pacific storm that lasted so long (31 days) and traveled so far (8,000 miles) that it was recorded as both an eastern-basin typhoon and a western-basin hurricane.

19 days, back up to hurricane strength again, and no signs of blowing out. "Come on, Nadine..."

Nadine finally blew out, encapsulated by a stronger set of fronts, after 23 days. Even the advisory from the normally humorless* NOAA is headlined:

...BYE BYE NADINE... ...WHAT A LONG STRANGE TRIP ITS BEEN...





*There were traces of humor in some of the later advisories, such as "NADINE HAS INCREASED TO HURRICANE STRENGTH...AGAIN..."

Well, I should have known better than to tease Nadine.

Her big sister Sandy is coming up to smack us upside the head. The models now agree that the storm will reach the northeast and make landfall in some form... the prediction as of this moment is that it will get here at hurricane strength, and smack Connecticut with the power quadrant.

Funny, we did this last year, too. So much for Halloween again.

If power is still out on Nov. 6 in any major part of the Northeast it's going to be a legal/political/media show for the ages. For the ages.

I am sorry if my quip lost you any sleep...Jimmo. Sincerely didn't mean it that way. I just hope that the track tracks east and it's all academic. Personally, I'd be for some kind of compensatory voting time if the worst happens. The courts have often ordered polling places open extra hours when there are problems. Hopefully they would do the same, but I suppose it's state-by-state.

What's the latest, Jim? I had no idea this storm was going to be this big but I just saw pictures of flooding in NYC and am shocked.

Peter, my girlfriend is with family on Staten Island. Their house was ok even though they were in Zone A for evacuations, her mom had picked out a place on a hill that is about 20 ft above the surrounding area. They have no power, a tree came down and banged up the trunk of the car a little bit. Wind was bigger problem for their neighborhood more than anything,but as we can see from various pictures and videos, the region is dealing with some pretty extensive devestation.

Just got a text saying Staten Island could be without power for up to a week.

Rob

Wow, Rob. I hope everyone's okay with no property damage. A few days without power is usually not a big deal, but I know there's a lot of damage behind that power outage.

No broken windows or other trees crashing into the house, no damage to the roof. They have the bathtubs filled with water for flushing, etc. No generator but they have various candles and flashlights. Now for them, it is just the wait as the area starts to recover.

Rob

Nothing much to report from inland Connecticut. We lost power about noon on Saturday, got it back Wednesday afternoon - about par. Other than mild wind damage, trees down, power lines down with them, we weren't hit that hard.

Having a generator makes life comfortable(-er) in such circumstances, but unfortunately the house network won't run on it. It is theoretically clean power but the systems won't run directly and the UPSes freak out. As each storm comes along we get better equipped to ride it out without living like campers; the last (next) step is to build a quality inverter-based power system for the servers and my office so that I can keep working instead of sitting around watching the wind blow.

In any case, the impact here was about a 1. It looks dreadful along the LI shoreline, in NYC and especially in poor Joisey. Kudos to Christie for being unpolitically gracious about Obama's attention to the disaster.

Had a similar situation on our generator until I ran a hair dryer on it as well. It may need extra load to avoid oversupplying the UPSes. I don't know the EE side of this, but it might be worth trying.

The girlfriends family just had power restored today on Staten Island.

Rob