Sandy, aka here we go again...

[IBrakeforPastry]

I hope she's okay. I have nephews at Univ of New Haven and SUNY Farmingdale, and both are home with their parents on Long Island because their schools were closed. The UNH nephew is a volunteer fireman so I imagine he will be at the firehouse for the next few days to be ready for whatever happens.

My parents are in Bayville, where the storm surge will be bad. Once again I'm glad my grandfather chose to build the house up on a hill instead of near the beach.

Did you grow up in Bayville? I'm from a few miles from there. My friend lives there now, and they always evacuate during big storms. I just read that Bayville Ave has partially washed away. I hope your parents aren't stranded! I'm pretty sure the rest of my family on the north shore is just without power, although there is always concern for the big old trees.

[ny biker]

Did you grow up in Bayville? I'm from a few miles from there. My friend lives there now, and they always evacuate during big storms. I just read that Bayville Ave has partially washed away. I hope your parents aren't stranded! I'm pretty sure the rest of my family on the north shore is just without power, although there is always concern for the big old trees.

I hope your friend's house was not damaged.

I did grow up in Bayville. I think it was West Shore Rd in Mill Neck that partially collapsed. But the Bayville Bridge is closed because Shore Rd is closed. For a time during the storm Bayville Ave was flooded at the other end of town so everyone was cut off, but that road is open now so it's possible to get in and out of town through Locust Valley. I did read that the causeway was blocked and there's no access to Center Island.

And I've seen photos of shrimp floating in flood waters on the roads. I had no idea there was shrimp in Oyster Bay until today.

I spent a fair amount of time this afternoon searching news sites for information about storm damage. I even registered for Newsday's website using my parents' subscription. My sister has to work tomorrow (she's a nurse) so I was checking road conditions for her commute since she has no electricity or internet. She also needed to know if one son's college was open tomorrow (it's not) and if the other would be able to drive back to his school in New Haven (looks like he can since they re-opened the bridges). I was also texting information about closed roads to my parents, for when they want to try to leave the house.

Everyone in my family that was affected by the storm is safe, though some cousins had some problems -- two had houses on the south shore of LI that flooded, and the restaurant where one worked was damaged by fire. But for the most part the news has been good.

I also had some sad non-storm news today -- there was a fire in one of the condos in my neighborhood and one man died. I knew him, and I'm friends with the women who lives in the unit below his. She's now displaced due to damage to her home.

I've been working from home but I had to take a long break this afternoon. Between the anxiety from the storm and the awful news about my neighbors I was just tired. So I wound up working until 10 pm to make up for the break.

I'm glad everyone so far is okay. I'm concerned about Pam and her dog, though. I hope she's just muddling through the power outage and we'll hear from her soon.

[Selkie]

We lost power for 37 hours, just restored late this morning. No damage to the house, cars, etc. Since we are surrounded by tall, old oaks, we were concerned about falling trees/limbs. The house got progressively colder, the longer we were without power, so I ended up swimming two hours this morning. Took a long hot shower at the pool and was loathe to return to the cold house.

Two blocks east, a big old oak fell on a house, Pretty much destroyed it.

Hope everyone else impacted by Sandy is doing ok, particularly those in NJ and NY.

[bluebug32]

Finally checking in from New Jersey. We live about an hour from the coast and our are was hit really hard. We just got our power back, but many roads are impassible with trees uprooted everywhere. One of the biggest problems for us right now if finding gas. When one station gets a delivery, hundreds instantly line up.