google (news) Prattsville NY... it is basically gone...
Upstate NY and parts of VT are really hurting from the rain totals... which take a day or two to fully realize the impact...
still over 4 million without power overall...
The "impact" of this storm and the "intensity" of this storm had nothing to do with each other... I won't comment on the local channels, I barely watch them for storm coverage, but TWC absolutely HAD to hype this... How else do you get people in the Catskills/Adirondacks/Vermont to pay attention to Hurricane coverage?? So many other factors come into play... (ironically enough that does not include the new moon tides, since there was not many problems from storm surge...) The Philly/NJ area had not only the wettest August ever but one of the wettest month's <period> ever... Watching the radar and wind reports as it hit NC and VA could make you believe it was falling apart and disorganized, but if you skip all the on the scene reporters and tune in to TWC around quarter of every hour you can hear the hurricane expert guys... they were constantly incredulous that although the max sustained winds were level or occasionally decreasing the pressure remained EXTREMELY low for a cat 1 storm... Their take was that instead of using the strength signified by the low pressure to produce a strong core, the storm used that energy to greatly expand the reach of the hurricane force and especially the trop. storm force winds a great distance... Let's be realistic; we're never going to see an Andrew or Katrina up here... the sst's won't support it... and, although this one moved way slower than your average NE trop. system, they usually accelerate quite a bit once the go from N motion to NE...Watching the initial landfall on the scene reports you could definitely feel underwhelmed and question whether the storm was really still as intense as they said it was... but remember, the strongest winds, in the NE quadrant, (more accurately the right front quadrant) were offshore the whole time, until Irene made landfall in NY and, (as we in Eastern MA have seen) they continued for a long time as it pulled away... we could expect these long duration gusts because if you remember Hatteras and other NC locals were still getting close to hurricane gusts when the center was up around MD... UNUSUALLY slow moving storm for the NE... heard one hurricane expert saying he wished the saffir-simpson scale didn't even exist because it creates a false sense of security...I think we have a lot to learn from Irene and it will be one more experience to plug into the predictions for the next one... Just imagine if it had reached cat 4, dropped back to cat 3 but skirted the outer banks (which would take a miniscule difference in course) and made landfall around SoCo as a strong Cat 2... this was a very big bullet dodged... for us anyway...
