I hope all of you in the path of Ida are okay...

Thanks for your concern. I live on the top floor of an 8-story apartment building in a gated community on the North Shore of Staten Island (near the ferry.) All is good here, no flooding or damage that I can see so far. Fortunately for me, this storm came in from the land so no tidal concerns. If it came in from the sea, it would be a different story since I live near the water. In the NYC metropolitan area there are reports of severe flooding and deaths of people trapped in basement apartments.

 

Whoa! I hadn't heard that about people being trapped in their basement apts and drowning. That's awful! I hadn't even heard that Ida had hit NYC.

Glad that you are OK!

 

Thanks. We had 9" of rain here on S.I. a new record for one day and all that happened in about a 10 hour period. There were some basement deaths reported in Queens and some reported in Elizabeth, NJ.

 

I have a buddy who is visiting NYC for the week. Texted him if he was OK this morning and he said "What are you talking about?" and said it rained pretty hard last night but he slept through it. Dude is clueless.

 

Central PA got whacked pretty hard. Lots of downed trees, flooded roads, etc. My new drainage system proved to be worth every penny we spent on it. I live halfway up a steep hill and the water got channeled and routed exactly where it was supposed to go. I also have gutter guard so my gutters and downspouts are in pretty good shape. Nothing like having a brick home in weather like yesterday. Yes, I did give thanks to God too...

 

God spared my town this time. Life was normal. No flooding. Schools were open. Roads were clear. My basement just has like splash of water but nothing else. Some of neighboring towns are brutal though. This Tornado thing just skipped us I guess.

 

Southern CT here, hammered with rain, throughout the night. No flood damage, thankfully.

Thanks for well wishes.

 

Posted in the other thread but my town was a warzone this morning.

 

I left the house at 4:40am this morning to get to work by 6am. My theory was roads would be out and the flooding was only going to get worse as the rivers north of me topped their banks.

It actually took me only 45 minutes to make what is usually a 20 minute drive. I didn't get detoured anywhere although I saw numerous roads blocked off as I drove to work. The thing that slowed me down was having to get out of the car 4 times along the way to access 4"-8" standing water on the road before I drove through it. In each case the water was still and it was just a question of whether I would flood the engine or not as I drive through.

On the way home at 1:30pm or so several of the roads I had driven were now impassable due to a foot or more of water on the road, some still and some moving. I wound up taking a high ground route that cost me an hour instead of the usual 20 minutes.

On the bright side traffic was non-existent most of the way aside from the stalled out cars that had been towed to the side of the road and were sitting with front hoods up, presumable to dry out.

 

I left the city for Maryland in a car last night with my girlfriend around 730pm, we misread this situation and had no idea it was going to be the most historic flood of our time in NY area. The rain had just started and no major alerts were sent out until 2 hours into the rain, ugh. We got through Holland tunnel and then the storm got insane in jersey city and we got stuck at Newark right by the airport. This overpass was so flooded, we didn't move for 4 hours, eventually a good Samaritan told us to drive through on the shoulder as it was lighter with water. We saw 3 or 4 cars try and had cars fail on them.

We got lucky getting across that flood water...by this time it was 12:30am we had a choice to keep going or head towards the airport. I decided to go towards the airport and we found a 7 Eleven and no flooding outside of the airport. Inside it was bad I heard...we slept in the car until 5:45am and then decided it was better to drive towards Maryland instead of going back. It was the right move as the weather was clear and there was no traffic. We made it to my gf's place by 10am and slept through the afternoon

Incredible how the weather did a 180 in just a few hours, it was a long exhausting night

 

Glad you got there safely!!!!

 

Crazy to think that we no longer see major hurricanes any more down here in Miami. Meanwhile they are whacking people up North and over in Louisiana and Texas.

Been through far too many in my life

**Knock on wood.

 

Took me longer to get to work today than it did yesterday. Danbury, CT is a total mess with roads blocked off all over the place. The GPS was a total waste. Wound up feeling my way to work one street at a time.

 

It's quite possible that weather patterns will be "permanently" changed as the warming continues. They're already beginning to see a slow down in the North Atlantic oscillation that drives the great conveyor current.

This is because colder ice melt is coming off of Greenland by the megaton at this point and it is capping the places in the system where warm water would normally begin to sink into the depths.

If this comes to pass northwestern Europe will become much colder and drier at the same time that much of the rest of the world warms to the opposite extreme. This will likely prevent storm systems from heading towards the Northern Americas from the mid-Atlantic. They'll be more likely to drift at the same latitudes they form, making the Caribbean, South America and West Africa very chaotic places to live.

"Permanent" in quotes because we're talking from human perspectives of time. The change that is baked into the climate right now is likely to continue well into the 2300's no matter what we do at this point. No action just means that it will continue driving past that point into a much warmer world - likely with Waterworld sea levels at some point in the next millenium.

 

Also in southern CT... it's weird, I noticed very little flooding and damage in my town but ten mins south is an absolute nightmare. My co-worker pumped 400 gallons of water out of his basement overnight and I had a puddle that was maybe three feet wide and a few centimeters deep.

 

Whatever the change, it is a welcome sign for us down here. Unfortunate for the many now experiencing them, but with storms like Hurricane Andrew blowing us off the fuckin map, I am good with the lack of hurricanes now.

Part of the reason I refuse to spend the tens of thousands of dollars to put in impact windows at our house. I have accordion shutters, but every time I contemplate the impact windows, I always think it is a waste with the lack of storms we now get. So easy to just close the shutters, if need be.

 

this might sound ignorant, but do South America and West Africa get bombarded with hurricanes just like we do?

I am legitimately asking because your post referenced those areas. Maybe I am ignorant to the world but I never hear "Hurricane ____ wiped out Nigeria yesterday"

 

Some storms form in the South Atlantic and hit South America and West Africa. Some storms form in the mid-Atlantic and don't follow the gulf current. We hear a lot about the storms that are headed our way (instead of at the Azores for example) because weathermen report the weather that is likely to affect the people listening to their report.

 

Remember though that tidal surges and sea level rise are going to do as much damage to the southern Florida infrastructure as storms do now - probably more damage in low-lying areas. Also, the occasional monster storm is going to be 3x worse when sea level is a meter higher, let alone the 3 meter rise we may see by the early 2100's.

I think much of southern Florida is likely to be uninhabitable in our lifetime.