We spent all day putting the poles and burlap up, and it will be a total PITA to take it down, but dh is concerned the sustained winds will bring those poles right out of the ground. It's not like they're cemented in or anything.

I was wondering what others on here are going to be dealing with as Sandy blows through.

i cant believe it would pull out a bare 2 x 2 ???

but then.. i never seen nor lived thru a hurry-cane ...

ken

ps: i presume he already has them out.. lol .. he's probably sitting in the basement.. with his head between his legs.. kissing his asses goodbye.. rotflmbo ...

pps: from the link:

The as was introduced in ca. 280 BC as a large cast bronze coin during the Roman Republic. The following fractions of the as were also produced: the bes (2/3), semis (1/2), quincunx (5/12), triens (1/3), quadrans (1/4), sextans (1/6), uncia (1/12, also a common weight unit), and semuncia (1/24), as well as multiples of the as, the dupondius (2), sestertius (2.5), tressis (3), quadrussis (4), quinquessis (5), denarius (10), antoninianus (20) and aureus (25)

It's hard to imagine such high winds from a hurricane that's hitting land fall 8 hours away from us, but the weather channel guy said the winds from it will be felt 1000 miles away.

He said if the winds are able to pull trees out of the ground then these poles that were just put in would be no problem.

This won't be like a Houston 'cane. It'll be so much colder than he's used to with temps in the 40s. He's used to ones when its in the 70s.

I too have difficulty with the idea of posts coming out of the ground, though it depends somewhat on how well they've been pounded down. If they are a couple feet down, then they shouldn't be a problem. Only a few inches, then yeah they might come out. Trees are a much larger surface for the wind to grab on to than a post, so that makes a difference as far as how easily the wind can pull one versus the other out of the ground.

In my experience the national weather agency will have the most accurate prediction.

I have trouble believing 35 mph wind would blow a pole out of the ground. Trees have are top heavy with a lot of wind resistance, that a pole does not have.

I hope your parents, and everyone else you care about there in NJ, remain safe. They are making this sound like the apocalypse with words like "dire, unprecedented, serious as a heart attack", because it's a north-heading hurricane, meeting a nor'easter on a full moon.

Sounds like a movie..

All that being said, I don't think my parents in inland NJ see gusts higher than about 65 mph. Its just hard to do much higher across inland areas unless you've got a thunderstorm or tornado to locally enhance it. Too many trees and hills to disrupt the low level wind flow. Thus, my suspicion that 60 mph is about the best you can do way out in western NY.

Putting those poles in were a pain, and in the process I got stung by a yellow jacket.

This was really poorly handled by the experts.

That having been said, Bloomberg is... well, misinformed. Just glancing at the tide gauge forecasts around NYC shows we are forecasting near record tidal flooding.

A similar storm (Isabel) hit a few years back just south of Chesapeake Bay in North Carolina. The winds pushed the water up the rivers of eastern VA and the Chesapeake Bay. Places around Baltimore flooded much more than they had seen for a long time even though the winds in B-more were not bad. Geography dictated that the surge of water traveled to flood Alexandria, VA, Wash. D.C. and Baltimore even though they were never in the path of the storm.

Here in southern Penn. generators are hard to come by. TV is saying the Lowes and HDepots are out. Gas cans are scarce. This isn't our first hurricane, what did these people do last time? It always amazes me that every time one of these comes along (a bad one every couple of years), people seem unprepared. I spent the day cleaning the waterways. Forecast here is for 6+inches of rain, 40mph winds for 3 or 4 days.

Last year when Irene hit, the path went up the Susquehanna valley. Non-stop rain, water went up so fast in some areas that customers of some fast food joints left the food and ran. Parking lots full of cars underwater. Zoo America in Hershey, PA had to kill their bison when the water trapped them where they couldn't get them to safety. The choices were to either shoot them, let them drown, or open the gates and let them romp through an amusement park full of people. Chaos in a lot of towns around here.

This one seems to be behaving according to forecasts, and we have good warning. I hope it accelerates after it comes ashore (many do), but sometimes the ones associated with a front hang around. I wonder why the difference.

4-5" rain here will turn my border stream into a raging monster. Hope it doesn't wash away my streamside Bald cypresses (13 of 'em) -- they're tough tho.

Taxodium have wide spreading roots, so even if one side is washed, the other will likely be ok.

Yeah, Isabel here is usually called Isabel-Lee. Lee arrived a couple of days before and soaked everything, saturating the ground. Then Isabel. A lot of small towns went under water for about 1/2 day. Driving up to Sunbury towards NCen PA, the main road is right along the river. (Route 11/15). I remember seeing the East Branch Susquehanna having camps, mobile homes, campers and parts of houses floating by. The west branch, coming from Williamsport, PA was much cleaner, by virtue of the fact that Isabel went east. The 2 rivers flowed side by side for a couple miles before merging somewhere below Shamokin Dam. Impressive to see a big river 1/2 brown, 1/2 clear.

Resin

+oM

18z GFS had it moving into NW PENN and then north up into Canada... I'm on the west side of Wisconsin, and i doubt we see anything more then a little NW wind...on the east side (by the lake), probably see higher winds near 30mph...maybe some higher gusts..

Fortunately, just in the last few days many leaves locally have dropped, but one has to consider the whole length of the electrical supply lines from the sources. Two main 500 kVA transmission lines cross the highest mountains in southern PA going east & are right in the path areas.

+oM

Resin

Famartin, I hope your parents stay safe, and that their power is, and remains, on.

Hope those of you in the areas of major impact get through this thing alright.

+oM

The center is right on top now, but winds are light. About 4" rain here, but the flooding isn't unusually bad (it moved very fast going west). But the neighbor's huge, old barn is a pile of rubble!

The fact that the power flickered constantly, but never went out is almost as amazing as the storm.

Winds got pretty strong here last night and I'm 25 miles off the lake. Sustained around 30 and gusting over 40.

Sustained 22mph and gusting to 35mph right now on Tues afternoon.

That bar patron needs to be punched right in the face; hard!

On another note, I have to give a small shout-out to my young Hornbeams. They stood up to those winds like total pros. They are the very definition of hardwood.

Power loss for 5 hours, it came back on at the height of the storm. Weird.
*****

Circuit breakers will keep "testing" lines that are shorted. If a branch lays on a line & shorts it out, but then some hrs later gets blown or falls off, the short can clear & the breaker will restore the power.

You're right, nobody was out in that trying to make repairs -- obviously too dangerous.

Point of all this being that while this is a horrible event, so good will actually come from it, and all of you can set yourself in the right mindset to see these things to make it all more tolerable. Have a prepared mind to appreciate those positives.

Arktrees

Sandy had tropical features, including...

Absence of fronts (warm...cold, etc)
Intensity (winds gusting to over 100mph)
A warm core
A very large, eye-like feature

It also had mid latitude features (Enormous size).. What hurricanes have scales up to 1000 miles with tropical winds hundreds of miles from the eye?!

Arktrees

Nevertheless there are large branches and trees down here and there. Found out yesterday why the power went out - this tree came down on the wires about 1/2 mile down the road.

+oM

It seemed to me, driving around the wilds of Essex County NJ that almost all of the trees that came up by the roots were street trees, squeezed in between the sidewalk and the curb/street; the trees in yards tended to break in half, like the one that took out our power line (both, obviously, doing an enormous amount of damage to life and property).

The winds were unbelievable - I have lived in NJ all 57 years of my life and seen many hurricanes of various sizes, and I had never experienced wind like that. I was very grateful that many of the trees had already lost a good part of their leaves, or it would have been worse. In a way, the snowstorm last fall probably saved a lot of houses, because the weaker branches were already gone before Sandy showed up. Quite an experience.