Glad to see you're OK, Bono'sSaint. Though I truly pity anybody with a basement or goundwater flooding like you have. UGH.
By pics, I didn't necessarily mean your own, but if someone could put up some of the pics that have been in the major papers the past few days. There's one on the front page of Today's NY Times of Binghamtion, NY...parts of the place (and much of Penn, NJ and NY State) that look like post-Katrina Orleans, I kid you not. The pics is of a lone house sumbmerged in a sea of brown water...it's actually a house that got ripped off its foundations and was sailing along with, tragically, a 15 yr old girl in it.
So far there have been 12-15 deaths (including three college-age dumbbells who decided to go sailing on a Sealy mattress and got swept away). It's funny, but here in Albany, we seem to be right at the extreme northeastern tip of this great sluggish behemoth. They had a chart in the paer today with amounts of rainfall per city in the NE, and a map of the affected areas. We have been averaging a measly 2 1/2 inches of rain a day the past week. That's the second lowest on the list (Troy, right next to us, is lowest with a little over 2.) Paradoxically, the village of Delmar, only 5 or 6 miles south of me, got about 4 inches Monday (!!). That's the most extreme weather we've seen since a full-blown tornado ripped through Altamont 4 yrs ago and caused extensive damage. (only 10 minutes south of me, yikes.) Albany has had no major flooding, though there have been some bridges and underpasses and streets closed down a few hrs a day..minor flooding. Yesterday part of my street about a block away was closed down between noon and 5 PM. People coming along to the barricades with cameras to take pics. Bizarre.
We should count our blessings, though. The real story is downstate. Binghamton looks like it was hit by a tsunami..unprecidented. That's about 45 mins northwest of NYC, and 2 hrs from me. A truck driver in his rig fell into a 25-ft hole that opened in the middle of I-88...that's going to be closed a while,, and allof I-90 between Schenectady and Syracuse (that's most of the central state) shut down most of yesterday. Guess my uncle won't want to leave out house in the Finger Lakes soon. And that reminds me.....I have to call my aunt, she lives in Catskill, the Catskill Mts towns which got some pretty heavy damage yesterday....I think Parts of Delware and Maryland got 14 inches of rain in 24 hrs Monday (!!!),
We too had a mild winter. Hardly any snow at all. They say this is all being caused by a stalled front off the Atlantic seaboard, I wonder how this is supposed to work? El Nino thunderstorms anyone? I'm not ready to say "global warming" yet.
ugh. I look out the window, it's starting to rain...not kidding. Yesterday we folks actually had a warm and sunnt afternoon between 1 PM and 8. I sat ourside in the hot sun for 3 hrs (no sunblock) and kept my tan going. Now back to the real world....
I pray for everyone who has suffered any damage or has been affected..esp you Bonos Saint. This stinks.