Sandy’s gone Westcentric

I just got finished clearing up after the Derecho, now I will have to start again.

The Royalist with all his talk of Westcentricity has caused Sandy to take an unprecedented turn to the left.  There she was heading harmlessly out to sea and now look, that last blue dot is ten miles from my house

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Author: Low Wattage

Expat Welshman, educated (somewhat) in UK, left before it became fashionable to do so. Now a U.S. Citizen, and recent widower, playing with retirement and house remodeling, living in Delaware and rural Maryland (weekends).

28 thoughts on “Sandy’s gone Westcentric”

  1. I was checking the path on the NOAA site yesterday and thought it was a bit too near to you for comfort!
    I remembered you said you were taking the boat out, presumably you cut short the trip and scarpered home before it started. Doesn’t look very good does it?
    It makes me very thankful that we live in a corner with a far less aggressive climate, at least that is, until the megaquake hits!!
    I was listening to the Canadian radio overnight, as I do, Northern BC is now achieving the stunning high temperatures during the day of minus 10 or so. Oh my God, this early? It is only October still.
    I never think that Europeans realise how lucky they are relative to their climates compared with elsewhere in the world. The USA and Canada are particularly vicious it amazes me that some of the places were ever deemed suitable for human habitation, especially the SW!
    Keep safe.

  2. CO, it’s why people chose (aboriginally, so to speak) to live in Europe, imho, and why, as you imply, the caribbean and the SW of the Staes were deserted until the clever Spanish arrived.

  3. Just watched a NBC projection, full moon, high tides, Cat 1, looks like a stormy time, good luck, we’ll be keeping up to date and thinking of you.

  5. CO: We did take the boat but not as far as we planned, we surfed back into the creek this morning. Have now secured everything movable and fueled up the generator, (we are almost guaranteed a power outage from this one). I did not check the nearest WalMart but I expect people are lining up to buy bread, milk and snow shovels.

    Soutie: Yes a cat 1, so we may not get much wind, but it looks like the storm may combine with a front coming in from the west which will slow it down, so we will probably get some super high tides, and the latest forecast is for 12 inches of rain locally.

  6. I really do not know whether to laugh or cry at the ignorance spouted here on occasion from apparently reasonably intelligent people.

    Janus your ideas on anthropology would be rather strange listening to those of the ancestral pueblo cultures! Try googling Chaco Canyon, the Arapaho and the Navajo! Only been in the SW an odd millennia before the Spanish. In fact a lot of them had moved on before the Spanish arrived. Are you really unaware that the ancestral Americans walked over the Siberian/Alaskan land bridge before it was submerged in the post Wurm II glacial melt? (ie post last ice age!)

    Araminta, A hurricane changing direction? Well you had better get on with it because there is no other bugger on this world that can. Please rearrange the rotation of the earth and the commensurate currents immediately please!

  7. LW, what happens to your section of tide water country if tidal and storm surges coincide? Do you inundate? Ever seen it happen on your patch? How far are you from open sea?
    What is your normal tidal reach?
    How much do you anticipate 12″ rain and its run off would exacerbate that situation?
    Sorry for all the questions but am genuinely interested. Used to happen to me at a house I had in the Towy valley even 35 miles from the sea. Like 18″ in the house on every tide! If all three parameters coincided.

  8. Tina.

    We can track them but they do not always conform.

    I quote from the LW’s post.

    “There she was heading harmlessly out to sea and now look”

    I rest my case.

  9. CO: Not much fear of flooding, normal tide here is about three feet. We are up twelve steps from the dock to the deck then another six to the house, my basement floor is 12 feet above mean high water. The last time we had a convergence of tide, wind and rain the creek rose continuously about eight feet to about 3 feet above my dock, in silence during a windless night a full day after the storm. (Hurricane Isobel December 2003). A lot of people locally are much lower and both Delaware and Maryland have instituted compulsory evacuations of lower lying beachfront and bayfront areas.

  10. Ara: Yes, Sandy’s left turn was “unprecedented” to quote the NOAA folk, the storm found itself sandwiched between two areas of very high pressure and had nowhere to go but West , it really had little to do with TR and his westcentric prognostications. 🙂

  11. Well quite, that’s the problem, LW, these things so not always conform, but I agree that TR probably is innocent on all counts. 🙂

  12. Janus: there were a lot of cultures living in the US South-West. Apache, Hopi, Navajo, Zuni, Luiseno, etc.
    What I do not understand is why anyone would want to live on the US East Coast. Wretched climate, wretched people.

  14. FEEG: Yes, landfall has moved a little North, now forecast for Fenwick Island Delaware, the first mate’s parents live about ten miles inland from there, their little town is FIVE feet above sea level, if the water gets over or through the beach barrier dunes it will probably go half way across the State of Delaware.

  15. LW: Not nice. My son and daughter in law live in Arlington VA, but they are in Cleveland at the moment.

  16. christinaosborne :

    I really do not know whether to laugh or cry at the ignorance spouted here on occasion from apparently reasonably intelligent people.

    Janus your ideas on anthropology would be rather strange listening to those of the ancestral pueblo cultures! Try googling Chaco Canyon, the Arapaho and the Navajo! Only been in the SW an odd millennia before thWhen Columbus “discovered” the New World, there were already 90 million people in the Americas, a third of the world’s populatione Spanish. In fact a lot of them had moved on before the Spanish arrived. Are you really unaware that the ancestral Americans walked over the Siberian/Alaskan land bridge before it was submerged in the post Wurm II glacial melt? (ie post last ice age!)

    P>

    CO, reasonably intelligent? You old flatterer! I wonder why they ‘moved on’? Could it have been (fanfare) the climate?

    Btw, an anthropological fact I spotted today, before you enlightened me (?): “When Columbus “discovered” the New World, there were already 90 million people in the Americas, a third of the world’s population”.

  17. LW – Before you batten down the hatches don’t forget the really important things like setting the next pome comp. 🙂 Good luck!

    OZ.

  18. Christina – I hear that there has been a 7.7 Richter scale earthquake off the coast of the Queen Charlotte Islands, (which mysteriously seem to have changed their name to “Haida Gwaii”). There are tsunami warnings as far away as Hawaii. Presumably a storm surge wouldn’t dare come anywhere near you.

    OZ

  21. LW – Good Luck! I hope you keep safe and dry…

    Could someone please divert a little rain our way. We don’t really want the extreme weather – but some precipitation would be very welcome.

    Janus – I suspect that the figures you quote have nothing to do with the numbers of people living in Ancient Rome compared with the numbers now living in New York but only to do with the numbers living per square foot, square metre or square whatever the Romans used… In the days before good transport, freedom from fear of invasions, lack of government laws on over-crowding and a whole host of other ‘modern’ notions people lived crammed together in what we would consider incredibly small spaces…

    🙂

  23. Janus, drought in the 1200s finished off the pueblo cultures as it did some of the Mayan.
    The whole SW and parts of Mexico went dry as a bone, they just couldn’t stay there. The real mystery is where they went-unknown!
    Surprising really when they had a sophisticated culture that never reappeared elsewhere, so one must assume they didn’t decamp en masse but trickled away over years or died in situ. (Just like the UK really!)
    The Spanish didn’t get there till 200 years later but never attempted to colonise those exact areas, too dry then and too dry now!
    California only exists today because they pipe all the water from the Sierra Nevada mountains and drink the Colorado river dry before it reaches the sea. Plus depleting geological ancient water supplies. The whole thing is a crisis in the making.

    OZ the Canadians are so politically correct one would assume they have broomsticks stuffed up their arses!
    Virtually everywhere has been given unpronounceable names of vague Indian construct, should have heard the announcers trying to pronounce it last night, quite amusing!No damage done because nothing is there! There is only one tiny village of 400 people on the South Island there and that was more than 50 miles from the epicenter. There are less than 5000 people on the whole Charlotte Islands evidently.
    Mainly fishing logging and tourism and of course drinking for the Indians! (They consider that a worthy full time occupation!)

    LW talk about home from home! The picture from your dock could have been taken from the Severn estuary or the ‘pils’ of Pembrokeshire any day of the week! Don’t think you are out of the woods yet eh?
    Hang in there.

  25. Fingers crossed for you, LW. Daughter is currently on a direct flight to San Diego just now and I was just wondering what they do to avoid Sandy as they cross the east coast.

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