Hurricane Sandy: A Retrospective (Part II)

Just days prior to the storm, I scoffed when I was told that I should fill up my gas tank, or buy batteries and flashlights. “It’s not going to be that bad,” I thought, “We’ll just get a day of wind and rain, like every other time a ‘hurricane’ hits New Jersey.” I mocked the mouth-breathers when I saw the bread aisle in my local Shoprite the night before Sandy hit. “Maniacs, the lot of them,” I muttered aloud. Continue reading

Hurricane Sandy: A Retrospective (Part I)

121028024140-03-sandy-1028-horizontal-gallery

It was almost as if we had been chosen. Nature decided that we needed to be punished, and what happened is something nobody at or near ground zero will ever forget. At the end of October 2012, Hurricane Sandy made its way up the Atlantic coast after battering everything from the Caribbean on up, and while out to sea, the “superstorm” made a sharp left turn and a subsequent beeline for New Jersey.  While American forecasters struggled to predict where the storm would make landfall, if at all, the European models correctly asserted that the massive storm would hit New Jersey and New York directly. At one point, Sandy was a Category 3 hurricane, which weakened to a tropical storm, and got a second wind and strengthened back into a Category 1 before slamming the Jersey shore.  Continue reading