thank you all for the updates, glad to hear some good news!!

Just catching up on the devastation of H. Sandy. Been in the woods for the last 12 days. Fled the mtns of NC/Tn ahead of a winter storm and come home to see that the NE is suffering the storm of the century. Glad to hear Scarlet is alright. I am keeping all those affected by Sandy in my thoughts.

Interesting comments on the various newscasts. A number of experts are suggesting that storms like this may be the "new normal" and that it's quite likely this is due to climate change. Very disturbing but not particyularly surprising.

I can believe that. We know the ocean temperature is rising. That's measurable. And hurricane's feed off warm water.
So, more hurricanes, and probably stronger too. And occasionally they are gonna come right up our way.

The ice caps are much smaller now too.

Man that sucks I hate being without power like that.

Yeah, we were only in the dark for a half hour last night. Still, if this sort of thing is going to become more common, I'm seriously thinking about buying a generator.

Bump

Now video from individuals is popping up. This is amazing, and sad to see the destruction.
8 million people still without power. Hundreds of thousands in NYC alone.

I heard from Warlock last night he lost power late Sunday night. He is safe but unfortunately power will not be restored for 7-10 days. Gosh thinking of everyone at this awful time!

Wow, that's awful! Thank God he's safe!

On Monday evening here on East 62nd St. in Manhattan the scarily quiet was punctuated by terrifying gusts of wind. I am in the back of the building facing south with a view looking out the kitchen window to the north through an alleyway, on Monday night I saw this big tree bending from east to west during one of the wind gusts and thought the whole tree might get uprooted. Then a bunch of branches snapped and flew up the street to the west. The speed at which they moved would scare the daylights out of you. I noticed a small piece of the tree perhaps one foot long or so but thick fly through the air like a missile past the alleyway's opening. The bark was completely peeled of exposing the jagged whitish pulp which was illuminated in the darkness by a street light. It was like a missile launch and I was glad to be inside. There were some people coming and going but thankfully they were not there at that time.

A friend who forgot to buy some beer considered making a beer run the corner deli but after retelling what I just saw. . .. "Chances are you will make it to the deli and back" said I "but do you want to risk losing an eye to a tree branch?" "Or worse?"

Fortunately I had some organic sulfite-free wine and beet wine( as it sounds wine made from beets which an Amish farmer I know makes).

As most of you know this city is a mess. One of my earliest memories is swimming one summer in the bay at Brezzey Point where over one hundred homes burned to the ground. Thank God no one was hurt and God Bless the NYFD.

We have heat and power here but many people do not. Like NJ Governor Christie I often visited the amusement park boardwalk pier at Seaside Heights NJ but no it has collapsed into the ocean. Weird looking sight to behold.

This is going to take sometime to recover from.