Nor'easters in New York

I grew up on the Jersey shore near a peninsula called Sandy Hook. The region of the United States where I grew up and live, the mid-Atlantic region is an extraordinarily safe place to live as far as natural disasters go. New Jersey and New York are very far from any fault lines. It rains a great deal in New York so there is very little brush fire risk. There are no volcanoes and tornadoes only rarely accompany the worst thunderstorms. In addition, since the Atlantic waters off shore of New York City are usually so cold, the rare tropical storms that do make it this far north are robbed of their power source-the warm waters of the Gulf Stream.

Perhaps the only natural disasters that wreak any sort of havoc on the New York metro area are Nor'easters. When you say the word "Nor'easter" where I grew up, you mean the storm that appeared out of nowhere in December 1992 when I was 13 years old. The Nor'easter of 1992 was the worst storm that I have ever seen in my life. It brought with it an immense storm surge and 90+ mph winds. I recall waking up in the morning (it was a school day) to a house full of darkness. The wind that was whipping past outside vibrated my windows. I looked at my alarm clock and saw from its dark face that there was no power. Not realizing the situation and with a perfect alibi for missing school, I pretended to go back to sleep. My brother woke me up and told me that there was a terrible storm outside and there would be no school that day. The house was unusually cold, because the power had been out for several hours and the furnace was therefore not working. In fact there was already about eight inches of standing water in the basement. We were forced to turn on the oven full blast in order to heat the house some little bit.

I looked out the window and was transfixed by what I saw. Our large wooden fence was being knocked down by the wind. Several sections of fence lay on the lawn and the remaining upright sections, like a mouth full of jagged teeth, rocked back and forth in the wind. At one point my mother told me to go outside and secure our large metal gate that had been swaying in the breeze. I bundled up and went out into the wind, which whipped against my body and made my progress very difficult. I recall latching one side of the gate shut. When I went to secure the other half of the large steel gate, a tremendous gale struck and I was knocked on my rear end into a puddle of water. The gate had struck me on the chin and I was bleeding. Furiously I attacked the gate and after a serious grid-iron battle I was able to secure it. I went back into the house, soaked, angry and bleeding.

Trees fell all over the county in that storm. Some of these trees fell on houses, injuring and even killing people. My stepfather, who was a radio mechanic during in the army, was able to connect a transistor radio to a car battery and we listened to the news in the cold and dark of the unlit house. I heard that the storm surge of several feet had flooded many towns up and down the coast. I saw the next day streets that were closer to the water inundated by three to five feet of water that had swept in from the Sandy Hook Bay. The radio also reported the frightening news that the Holland Tunnel had flooded. One of the most poignant memories that I have from that frightening storm was standing by the window looking out into our backyard. I saw an object fly by the window lightning fast. It looked to be as small as a Frisbee but then I heard a tremendous bang as the object struck one of the remaining sections of fence, knocking it clear into the street. When I went out the next day I saw that the flying object had been half of the roof of our tool shed and the gouge it had made in the fence indicated to me that it would half cut a person clean in half had they been in its way.

I don't come from the South so I have never seen the power of a hurricane first hand. Nor'easters are the worst storms that we experience in New York. When they are accompanied by snow, they become blizzards. The Nor'easter of this past weekend (4/15/2007) certainly dropped more rain then I have ever seen in a major storm. Five inches of rain can cause serious flooding. I worked all day in the storm, criss-crossing the city to make my tutoring appointments. The most interesting moments were in the subway. At one point, as I sat on an uptown F train, the conductor announced that the train would be stopping at 34^th street due to flooding. Between 28^th and 34^th streets, however, the train came to an abrupt halt. For a minute there, as we waited in the tunnel I felt that it might not be a good idea to be underground. Nor'easters are a reminder to New York City that it is not exempt from nature's fury.