Ok, the Hurricane might not be called Kill Bill yet but I thought I would be the first to use this name on the internet and news media if the balloon goes up.

Latest Accuview weather Report for Bill

Just suppose a Cat 4 Hurricane is going to barrel down on New York in 5 days time. How do you evacuate millions of folks in just a couple of days (track confidence improves to the point were the evacution order in given) ?





Evacuation worse case scenario in green for Cat 3-4 Hurricane.

IF I lived in NYC I might consider an unplanned, last vacation of the summer before the kids start back to school.

Now or the next few days might be as good a time as any, right?

they actually did something like this one Discovery the other day-needless to say, the "plan" didnt work out as, ah, planned...

I think that storms tend to lose power as they go north... right? That's what I seem to remember from living in Philly (of course, it's inland a bit)

Lets hope your right that they dye down a little as they go north. a cat 4 hurricane in NYC could be amost Katrina worth.

I will have to watch this closer.

No, it would make Katrina look puny. Even a cat. 1 hurricane slamming into NYC would be a major disaster.

I plan on making popcorn and watching the fun...

-Blast

Check the sea-surface temps at http://weather.msn.com/maps.aspx?weap=0 A hurricane that far north this late in the season might not lose energy to quickly.

I live in an area that is predicted to be underwater in a category one storm. As might be imagined, I'm watching Bill closely!

According to the National Hurricane Center it looks like Bill should miss us as it goes by, but not by such a wide margin. It looks like there's a good chance I'll wake up Sunday morning to tropical storm force winds. At this time, it does not appear that we will bug out, but I'm keeping the option open.

How are we preparing? I made a checklist of the things that would come with us in the event we head for the hills. Mostly it's high value items and items of sentimental value. Also the items that would need to be moved in from the backyard to keep them from becomming missiles (we may need to do this anyhow). My kids would think it was fun to head to the Catskills to see their grandparents. I also confirmed that my flood insurance is in effect and paid up.

I spent a lot of time in the ocean this past weekend, and I can tell you that the water is WARM this year. If Bill does indeed head our way, I do not imagine that cool water would slow him down too much (mind you, warm for these parts means 75 degrees, not the 80 or 90 you get down south.)

However, to answer the question of how you evacuate NYC, I believe that the consensus answer (on this board, among those I have discussed it with) is that you don't. It simply will not work. There are too many people, and many of them have no means of transportation.

Which is not to say that they will not try, but unless you leave early, I'm not sure you'll do more than sit in traffic. I intend to make my final stay-or-go decision tomorrow (Thursday) evening. If I make the wrong decision, the fall back option is to take shelter in Manhattan on high ground, which should be OK, but I'd rather be upstate 120 miles away!



Blast, thanks for your support! Maybe I can borrow your inflatable raft for a few days? That may be the only way to get out of NYC without sitting in traffic, but you'd want to be off the water well before the storm hit!

Hummmmm Beer, Bourbon and popcorn might be a great way to pass the storm, as well as gas!

Why not just leave now and take some time off. There will be less mental stress and when nothing big happens you can really relax.

Russ,

In a perfect world, I agree with you. Two things get in the way:

1) Responsibilities. I have many, and many people depend on my fulfilling them.

2) Stuff. There really is a bunch of stuff I'd want/need to take with me if I was leaving on the assumption that my house was going to get washed away. If I leave in "vacation" mode and can't come back, I'd be really upset. If I leave in "bugout" mode, it will not be much of a vacation.

I honestly believe that if I decide to leave on Thursday evening we should be fine. Of course, that statement is now immortalized on this board for me to regret someday! I'm interested in getting Charlie's take on things, if he hasn't headed for the hills, yet! His BOL is not far from mine, from what I understand.

Jesselp

Hey, all you New Yorkers!

Have any ideas ever been put forth on how long it WOULD take to evacuate NYC?

Just a random for-instance: Terrorists have planted a nuclear bomb somewhere in NYC, and it is set to go off in seven days if a ransom isn't paid. The news is immediately transmitted to the public, not kept secret until two hours before know-it-all authorities realize they can't get to the bomb to stop it.

I'm supposing good weather, with no other disasters getting in the way.

Here's one article on the plans for a major hurricane:

Evaluating a What-If Case: New York City's Evacuation (NY Times)

Don't know if it would work or not. Hope not to find out.

Don't forget that Katrina was a Cat 1 hurricane in New Orleans, and just barely at that.


We're not late in the season. Peak activity is usually September.


If your elevation is that low pay more attention to tide schedules, landfall timing and storm surge predictions - "category" isn't important when the word "underwater" becomes plausible.


Indeed the neighbors would not appreciate being decapitated by a garden hose, or a flower pot behaving like a fast ball, high & inside ...

There is an additional consideration that comes into play in NYC for a go/stay decision - is it really a good idea to be the only one on the block with food and drinking water?

Here is the Kill Bill worse case scenario i.e. a CAT 3 Hurricane (sustained winds 111-130 mph) striking New York;



Track Length = 1920 miles - Kill Bill average speed = 18mph

Time = 106.66hrs or 4 Days 10.66hrs

Time from the 1500 UTC WED AUG 19 placemarker = Monday 24th Aug 01.45 UTC or Sunday 23rd 21:45 EDT assuming of course this track is correct and Hurrican Bill maintains an average of 18mph exactly

High Tide in New York occurs @ 23:31 PM 5.2ft height

*** Please note this is my own predicted course calculation ***

What is quite worrying though at the moment is that the current projected tracks for Hurricane Bill require the track to deviate quite sharply north to north north east after passing to the West of Burmuda.



The National Hurricane Centre has the Hurricane has Bill located 200-225 miles West of Bermuda on Saturday morning around 08.00 am EDT- This would be consistent with their predicted track. If the track is 325-350 miles West of Bermuda instead then I would begin to seriously think about getting out of dodge i.e only a divergence difference of 125 miles between the 2 tracks. This would leave only about 38 hours to evacuate from New York City (probably only 24 hours realistically as you would want to be at a safe place for half a day or so to settle down).

As you can see evacuating millions of people with only a realistic 24 hrs Notice is going to be extremely difficult. Would the authorities even bother with the Evacuation notice - the notice time would be just to short and having millions out on the roads may be worse than having folks just hunker down and find a place above 3-4 storeys high. i.e higher than the 20-25 ft surge.

Somewhere I suspect there are some meteorologists and some computer programmers/modellers with some sweaty palms right now.

I've been in NYC during a Cat 1 hitting here - it's a yawn

How long to evacuate? OEM estimates 72-96 hours for the people that have to go in a Cat 3 (If I remember correctly - might be 5 days)

The plan is to run the subways 1 direction away from the low areas, ditto buses

OEM hasn't even given us a heads up - which means they aren't worried

Yeah, Ray Nagan and Christine Blanco weren't worried either.....

Please be careful.

Typhoon Morakot and the responses by Taiwan and China (Fujian Province) might be good things to look at.
There might be a few lessons from their experiences.

Jesselp, thank you for that link.

From it:

"Mr. Bruno said that the city's plan called for firefighters to go to hospitals and see what was needed. "We have them all mapped," he said. "If we see the possibility of an evacuation having to occur, the Fire Department will go out and communicate with each of them and say, 'What are your plans, how are you going to do it?"'"

One would like to think they are asking that question NOW, rather than at the time of a disaster.

Like I said - they have THEIR plans, and don't seem worried. I have MY plans (Hint, I deliberately bough HIGH and INLAND for NYC). I have my supplies in (duh, who here doesn't), my gear for the volunteer work is tested. I live 110ft above sea level 2 miles from the NORTH shore (less flooding on the north)

Add to the fact that the WESTERN edge of the 5 day cone is about 250-300 miles EAST of NYC (aka even if it veres towards us from the predicted center of the track, most likely it's going WAY east of NYC)

I'm a lot more worried about the lines of Thunderstorms that seem to be coming through with amazing regularity this summer

How spooky is this considering the track looks almost identical to that of Hurricane Bill right now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtlUjK5-Fx4

The second link is very intresting. It apears that there is already a person who has questioned this. Also wasn't there a "It could happen tomorrow" episode about a hurricane hitting NYC?

Last I checked, I believe there is a cold front pushing east. You can expect it to influence the hurricane, and that is the reason for the expected turn.... in my floridian-trial-by-fire-weather-forecasting opinion.

I tell ya how it's going to roll:

-emergency service workers will get to work 20 hour days
-Mayor is going to make some retarded speech
-city is going to come to a halt for a day, unite and than fall into regular apathy and insensitivity we are known for
-people are going to flood the hospitals
-someone is going to make a sacrifice and make morning paper (as in Joe Doe is a hero because he helped an old lady cross the street during hurricane)
-week after when all is over and safe, stores will run out of water, flashlights and duct tape

Thats why you already bought your stuff, right? Cause you will be at work.

Anyone who regularly visits this site and doesn't already have all that stuff should just Log Out and stop reading, you're wasting your time here.

Supplies should be acquired before the emergency. Some supplies should be used for practice before the emergency so you don't do it the first time for real. That even applies to food; do you like it? Can you like it for two weeks?

Anything you buy ahead of the emergency is stockpiling; any supplies you buy during the emergency is hoarding.

yep big city lot of people not use to it big prob............

Good to see the east coast is dodging the worst of it. I wonder the effect of these instances in which a hurricane is an imposing threat for a time but doesn't pan out.

Will the unrealized threat save lives in the future as more people started thinking of preparedness or do they increase complacency because in the end nothing happened?

I remember the federal government being closed for a day on the chance that Hurricane Hugo could come up the Chesapeake Bay.

Ended up being a gorgeous sunny day. My roommates and I had not a care in the world and it never crossed our minds to take precautions. Preparedness was not in our vocabulary. Back then we lived at work and Happy Hour and didn't think about much outside of that.

Surprising in hindsight, because one of my roommates was from Mobile and had childhood memories of Hurricane Camille, among others in the intervening years. She used to talk about post-hurricane block barbeques to use up the meat in everone's freezers during the ensuing power outages.

No other comment.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/tropical_weather

Hope the link works.

I have that map hanging behind my desk!