OT - Anyone planning to evacuate from Irene?

Good luck. Hope you got a generator and plenty of gas.

Best Regards Tom.

Good luck Ed!

--Winston

Oooohhh...

Thanks, Winston. I'll tie a rope to my ankle and tie the other end to a sewer pipe. It's the only thing I trust to stay in the ground.

I'm thinking about it. We are kind of protected by big old trees. What I'm worried about is one of those big old trees coming through my roof.

No generator, and I used the last of the gas in the lawnmower this week. If it looks bad, we're headed west. I have a case of water and food and clothes for a few days in the trunk.

It's not too late to pick up an inverter to run your fridge off your car electricals for an hour a day.

--Winston

Thanks for the thought, Winston, but I'm not going to get trapped here. If it's a high Category 2 and headed straight for us, we're gone.

And we only have a hurricane hit hard about once per century. d8-)

I'm right in the line of fire (four mile drive from the George Washington Bridge), and I'm gonna hunker down and enjoy the show.

I'm most concerned about a tree, more-or-less across the street from me, that has been functionally dead for years. A couple of years ago, in a big storm, half of it fell and took out my power for five days. The other half is likely to go this weekend, and I'll be very pissed off. The homeowner* (too cheap to take care of his fsking tree) is away on vacation.

I do have a generator and plenty of gas. I ran the generator yesterday afternoon (I run it for 10 minutes or so every three months just to cook off any condensed water in the oil). I also have a shitload of batteries (maybe 500 pounds of lead-acids in various UPS devices and a bunch for flashlights and radios), and another shitload of candles.

Tomorrow, I'll finish moving all my basement shop stuff at least a foot and a half off the floor.

Being this prepared, I fully expect the storm to be nothing more than a breeze a drizzle.

Oh, and one more thing. An earthquake AND the "storm of the century" in the same week? Surely this is some Old-Testament punishment for something...

(...)

I'll take my earthquakes any day. :)

I don't think about them unless they are happening and when I do think about them with any concentration, they've already happened.

--Winston

We had one of those, too. This week. Coincidence? Maybe...

'Hope you have a good view.

We have a 95-year-old Norway maple in our front yard that I'm worried about, and an enormous old fir in my neighbor's yard that will take out my entire roof if it blows down this way.

Yeah, I think you're helping us all out by all of your preparation. That ought to almost guarantee a fizzle. d8-)

PLUS, another sign of the apocalypse -- Dick Cheney's memoir is published.

Ed,

Sounds like your using good judgment; let us know what happened when your dug out and your internet is back up..

Good Luck!

Erik

The thing I like about hurricanes, compared to earthquakes and tornadoes, is that we have no excuse for winding up in physical danger. There's plenty of warning.

Thanks, Erik. The likelihood is that it will wobble off the median path before it gets here, so we'll probably get a lot of rain and some wind, but the chance of damaging wind is probably less than even. We will evacuate, however, if it looks like we're the target.

If I disappear after Saturday night, I'm either in the next state or my ISP is down.

Bon chance, Ed.

And don't forget to gas up the car/fill all the gas cans -before- doing the shopping for long-term outages.

So, what's the story on inverters? What can and can't you run on them? What's the figure on horsepower for them? I've heard you can't run very large motors, like an electric chainsaw, on them. Does anybody here have much experience with them?

Regarding evacuations, I don't expect to leave for Irene. You, Win?

But if something were to head my way, I'd pack up the valuables and leave at the first hint of evacuation, way before it was official. Traffic out of town is likely to be deadly for at least 24 hours before the official word leaks out, 48 hours before it's officially released, especially in very large urban areas.

I really should stock up a second (and maybe 3rd) BOB.

-- Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens. -- Jimi Hendrix