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