Under the Full Moon, the Real Boo

Who needs a fake Halloween haunted event when Nature gives you the Real Boo?

(Witch decoration on Vestal Rail Trail, Vestal, NY courtesy of AM)


My home neighborhood, where I spent part of my babyhood (Arverne,in the Rockaways section of New York City) is flooded.  Rockaway Beach is flooded.  Power shut off in parts of Lower Manhattan.  13 feet of water at the Battery. Subways in danger of flooding.  Reading Twitter, some massive transformer explosion, huge green flash and East Village goes dark. But first some one tweeted a photo, with cars floating down the street under an eerie yellow glow.

The Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook, that I blogged about several times in September, is flooding.  High tide came - under a full moon.  Could you make this up?

And then there is The Crane. The huge crane dangling in midtown Manhattan, looking like something melted it.  As of this writing, it's still there.

I'm crying out to NYC friends on Facebook:  are you there? One responds, sending me a map where I can check out power outages.  Looking at this, I think a cousin has lost power and he later posts on Facebook that he, indeed, has lost power.  Someone in Bensonhurst (a neighborhood in Brooklyn) says the downed power lines are putting out quite the fireworks show.

The Daily News (one of NYC's papers) is flooding.  So much for The News.

A cousin in Harrisburg, PA lost power for a while and has water in his basement.

We made the right call in insisting my elderly mother in law and her disabled son, who live in the metro area, stay with a relative.  Power is out where my mother in law lives now, and, knowing their electric utility, it could take days to be restored.  Normally, she doesn't flood and didn't flood during Irene. Let's hope she doesn't now, either.

State of emergency here in Johnson City NY, 150 long miles away from NYC.  But, the weather here is actually less dire than first predicted.  We lucked out.  Hope I'm not too premature in saying that.

I'm prewriting this so I can post immediately upon waking up today, or in case my power is out.  I won't know what I will be waking up to.

To all my readers in the path of Sandy...I hope dawn finds you safe and undamaged.  I know what the family of NYC residents will do.  You will all unite and get things done.  NYC residents are proud, and are survivors.

You will survive.  And I will be with you in spirit.