Here Comes Irene: Flood Prep & Rain Expectations

[turbo]

We lost power briefly several times during the day yesterday, probably due to switching at substations to cope with down power lines. This road is quite susceptible to outages, but somehow, we didn't lose power. The severe T-storms and micro-bursts of earlier in the summer might have taken down most of the weaker trees.

The state has localized road damage due to flooding, including roads that are washed out and in need of rebuilding, and we lost some bridges, too. Major rivers don't seem to be too much of a problem, but they will likely crest later after water arrives from headwaters in the mountains. All in all, quite a bit of damage from the rains. Irene was only a tropical depression when she hit, but still packed a bit of a punch.

 

[Q_Goest]

Pennsylvania consists of Philadelphia on one end, Pittsburgh on the other, and West Virginia in between. I'm just north of Allentown and power here has been out since Saturday night. PP&L Electric says they have tens of thousands of homes without power and it's been like,,, almost 2 days now.

Other than that, not much happened. Couple trees down...

I have a renewed disrespect for PP&L. Glad we didn't get a hurricane through here!

 

[FlexGunship]

Uh, no they don't! Maybe if you absolutely have to be outside, but you're still better off inside a building.

No responsible person would say that.

Uh, it was supposed to be ironic.

 

[wuliheron]

The people of my town have been in denial since 1677. The town was settled because of the crick. A dam and a mill race were soon built and thus yesterday's flooding became inevitable. I think the townspeople are ready admit that the past 330 years have been a huge mistake and relocate the whole shebang to the Gobi desert.

We have regular flooding where I live too, but no water is worse then too much. Eventually people raise their houses off the ground or move to higher ground. After the last hurricane we had an entire town raise their houses ten feet off the ground. Less then a block away I have a state owned marsh that during the hurricane came right up to my front door. The worst problems occur when the population explodes and unscrupulous land developers begin corrupting the political process.

 

[wuliheron]

People have short memories once the mess is cleaned up.

Its not just short memories, but greed and denial triumphing over sanity. Some have even suggested NY was hit because they recently legalized gay marriage and it was God's wrath. Remember, these are the same Americans that recently 60% of them suspected their president wasn't even a citizen and still believe in ghosts and creationism.

 

[Jack21222]

Damage report from a Baltimore suburb:

Power lines down in front of my next-door neighbor's house, as well as a few houses down and around the corner, crossing the street. A large tree fell across the road, taking out the power lines with it. The power lines being hit by the tree caused a domino-like chain reaction, and 4 poles are down. Cannot see what the tree landed on, but the closest pole is in splinters and smashed a mailbox.

We lost power at 3am Sunday morning, and we have not yet seen a utility truck. It might be a week before I get electricity back, and maybe even longer for Internet, because cable lines were run from that pole.

There were half a million people without power here in Maryland, so it's hard to guess when we might get service restored.

We have a gas generator to power my sister's hospital bed, the refrigerator, and a fan.

I'm posting from my phone, which I had to charge in my car.

For a "dud," this has been a serious disruption to my life.

 

[Astronuc]

I think we caught a bullet or grenade rather than a cannon ball or artillery shell. Irene has been pretty destructive in our area and further north.

West, north and east of us, there are several towns underwater. Some roads and bridges have been washed out, homes and businesses have been washed out or severely damaged.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/videos-show-upstate-york-vermont-irene-flooding-153510538.html

 

[turbo]

The scanner is still very busy today, as light winds topple trees out of saturated soil and they come in contact with power lines. Some of the smaller rivers locally (mostly fed from the western mountains) have experienced flood surges, at times over-topping nearby roads by 4-5 feet. Irene is getting in the "last word".

 

[dlgoff]

Oops. http://www.wjactv.com/video/29011644/index.html?source=CNN"

 

[lisab]

Oops. http://www.wjactv.com/video/29011644/index.html?source=CNN"

Just...wow. Wonder if they were just following the GPS.

 

[Evo]

I wonder if part of the problem with downed power lines there is because, you have your lines on poles.

Where I live there are no utility poles to be seen, everything is underground. Some of the rural and older areas around here still have poles.

 

[Jack21222]

Whenever power and Internet are restored, I'll post pictures in this thread of the downed poles on my street. The utility company just came by to assess the area. With any luck, I'll have power by tomorrow evening.

 

[Borek]

I wonder if part of the problem with downed power lines there is because, you have your lines on poles.

Where I live there are no utility poles to be seen, everything is underground. Some of the rural and older areas around here still have poles.

There are over 10 million Poles in US, which is apparently not enough to put power lines above ground in all states.

 

[turbo]

I wonder if part of the problem with downed power lines there is because, you have your lines on poles.

Where I live there are no utility poles to be seen, everything is underground. Some of the rural and older areas around here still have poles.

Maine is very rocky, ledg-ey (if that's a word) and rural. It would be prohibitively expensive to bury everything. We also have severe winter weather and rocks that migrate upward on ice-lenses every winter, which makes burying fiber-optics problematic because you can't possible trench the cables deeply enough to escape damage from such rocks.

If all utilities, data companies, phone companies got together to share the cost of burying cables and wires and fiber-optic bundles, rural counties like mine would still have all that crap draped between poles. It's just not cost-effective to bury everything. I was the IT manager for a large ophthalmic practice when a start-up data company wanted us to tie in as they connected Bangor, Waterville, Portland, etc via buried optical-fiber bundles. I asked for assurances regarding reliability, and their willingness to pay for us to revert to phone-based systems if their network failed. I was unable to obtain any such assurances, and the owners of the practice opted to stay with copper when they read my report.

 

[turbo]

There are over 10 million Poles in US, which is apparently not enough to put power lines above ground in all states.

 

[Astronuc]

I wonder if part of the problem with downed power lines there is because, you have your lines on poles.

Where I live there are no utility poles to be seen, everything is underground. Some of the rural and older areas around here still have poles.

We have a lot of utilities above ground. Newer, more recent, construction tends to put services underground.

 

[turbo]

We have a lot of utilities above ground. Newer, more recent, construction tends to put services underground.

At our last house, we were in a "modern" subdivision (30+ years) and the phone and electrical service were buried all through our neighborhood, but only from the street to the houses. Transformers were housed in buried vaults, and that set-up was not without its faults. Growing pains.

 

[dlgoff]

Transformers were housed in buried vaults, and that set-up was not without its faults. Growing pains.

Ever since I worked for a power utility, mentioning underground vaults with transformers brings back bad memories. Not good for workers when they are in there when a circuit shorts to ground.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

The Delaware river has just slightly overflowed its banks in Burlington, NJ. There are hundreds of trees and branches floating in the river making a kind of logjam island in the center. It's funny to watch the waterfowl treating it just like an island. There is more flooding in my town than I realized this morning. Even though my house is high and dry, most of the roads leading to it are flooded. The weather today is fine, you couldn't ask for better.

 

[Evo]

Maine is very rocky, ledg-ey (if that's a word) and rural. It would be prohibitively expensive to bury everything. We also have severe winter weather and rocks that migrate upward on ice-lenses every winter, which makes burying fiber-optics problematic because you can't possible trench the cables deeply enough to escape damage from such rocks.

If all utilities, data companies, phone companies got together to share the cost of burying cables and wires and fiber-optic bundles, rural counties like mine would still have all that crap draped between poles. It's just not cost-effective to bury everything. I was the IT manager for a large ophthalmic practice when a start-up data company wanted us to tie in as they connected Bangor, Waterville, Portland, etc via buried optical-fiber bundles. I asked for assurances regarding reliability, and their willingness to pay for us to revert to phone-based systems if their network failed. I was unable to obtain any such assurances, and the owners of the practice opted to stay with copper when they read my report.

You can run fiber optic on poles.

 

[turbo]

You can run fiber optic on poles.

We already do, but the comments about burying utilities are inapplicable to sparsely-populated regions in harsh climates.

 

[Evo]

We already do, but the comments about burying utilities are inapplicable to sparsely-populated regions in harsh climates.

My comment was about the problems with so many outages is that those areas have aerial wires, outages are to be expected any time there's a bit of wind or ice.

 

[turbo]

My comment was about the problems with so many outages is that those areas have aerial wires, outages are to be expected any time there's a bit of wind or ice.

I'm pretty sure that there are bean-counters at the power companies that balance the cost of overtime for storm repairs, calling in crews from adjacent states, provinces, etc vs the cost to harden those utilities by burying the transmission lines. It is a business decision. Consumers don't get to make those decisions. The Maine Public Utilities Commission (a toothless lackey of the utilities, IMO) and the utilities themselves make those decisions.

 

[rhody]

I have to say I agree with you Chi, I am not upset by this at all, whereas some people as you stated whip themselves into a frenzy. If this tropical storm, sits on top of us and churns then flooding could be a problem. I have a french drain system on the low side of my house, and it has survived a 4 inch rain dousing before. Granted, we had power, so the sump pump could function, as I remember, it wasn't for very long, if at all. All my drains are clear and attached at the moment. My major concern is losing power for an extended period, that may cause a problem, other than that, just bring everything inside, and take some pictures and video's. If the rollers get very big, I may take some wave video and post it. If they are not dramatic, I won't bother.

Rhody...

ACK ! I am back, 29 hours without power ! The storm did not dump much rain, well to the west of us. But the winds were in the 80's, gusts, I where I live. I went outside about 1 pm on Sunday and had to lean into it. I know what 80 mph feels like because I do it (every once in awhile, cough cough... on my beast of a bike). We were lucky because if the rain had buried us we would be a week without power, because of ten times the number of trees being down. I took some HD video if the front yard, tree's bending in big wind gusts and got sand blasted at the beach taking more DD video. I will post in the next couple of days, and provide a link.

For sure a 2000 watt gas generator will be on my short term list, if we had gotten 10 or more inches of rain, my basement would have flooded for sure. My backup plan was to put bailing buckets near the sump hole, great plan, huh ?

The generator would allow us to keep the pump, fridge and one TV running, perhaps the modem and router and one laptop as well.

We dodged a bullet. BTW the island I live on was knocked out by one of those huge towers that hold three high tension wires on each side, the deliver about 440,000 volts each, one of the insulators failed in the wind and dropped the high voltage line on the ground, causing it to FAIL !

The failure maybe lack of maintenance on the insulator's, can't be sure, but it knocked out about 40,000 people's power. There are coming back, one zone at a time. Both hurricane Bob and Gloria pummeled the same wires with 110 - 120 mph wind gusts, but those same insulators did not fail that time, hard to say for sure what caused it.

I was starting to have PF withdrawal, and I must say, it isn't pretty, anyway I am back.
Did anyone miss me ? Turbo ? I haven't read to the end of the thread yet so I apologize. I will after I post this.

Rhody...

 

[Astronuc]

My comment was about the problems with so many outages is that those areas have aerial wires, outages are to be expected any time there's a bit of wind or ice.

In the local city, many power lines are under the street, as is the case in NY City. Ocassionally there are shorts, or sections shutdown due to flooding.

The matter: Would Burying Power Lines Reduce Power Outages? is discussed here:
http://www.npr.org/2011/08/29/140042767/would-burying-power-lines-reduce-power-outages

Basically, it costs considerably more to bury power lines. One rule of thumb is a cost differential of $1 million/mi, or buried lines cost 10x overhead. And as for risk, it's trading one kind of risk for another.

In the Northeast, much of the ground is rock, so burying utilites is problematic, especially where the limited earthen ground is subject to flooding.



On my way home from work, I stopped in the local neighborhoods to see some of the flooding, which had subsided a little. It's still a problem for homeowners along the creek that had overflowed. The water was down a few inches but still high enough to flood basements. I could also smell fuel - probably gasoline and diesel fuel.

And I was treated to an example of 'stupidity being trumped by ineptitude'. Some idiot swiped a plastic garbage container from a city park and attempted to set off down the rushing creek! He failed when the can tipped sideways and he ended up in the water, while still hangin to a fence. The container floated off down the creek. Had he succeeded in getting into the creek proper, he likely would have drowned, or otherwise been bashed on the rocks of the waterfall further downstream.

 

[rhody]

Chain-saw + Evo = gruesome death.

I read what I missed. Just caught up on a few gems in the thread, like this one...

Nice Turbo... funny, I was thinking the same thing when the storm was knocking them down. We must think alike...

Rhody...

 

[rhody]

A picture a member drew of me sawing a limb off of a tree.

https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=576571&postcount=72

That's a beauty Evo. We all know you wouldn't do that, but other horrendous side effects could befall you. The movie "The Final Destination XX" comes to mind.

Rhody...

 

[DoggerDan]

Most utilities are underground, here, including fiber. Then again, I live in Colorado.

I don't know why people keep building their houses on the sand, particularly sandy spits known to shift significantly over time. One woman in a video said, "You see people who have built their lifetime dream and then lose it."

Oh, wah. Next time build your house somewhere other than a high-risk hurricane and flood zone. Either that or build it to withstand the elements.

Video: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/videos-show-upstate-york-vermont-irene-flooding-153510538.html

 

[Astronuc]

I don't know why people keep building their houses on the sand, particularly sandy spits known to shift significantly over time. One woman in a video said, "You see people who have built their lifetime dream and then lose it."

I caught that same comment. It just boggles my mind that people build multi-million dollar dwellings only 15 to 20 feet above mean sea level on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, where one can expect to have a major hurricane during a given 30 year period, or less in some cases.

On the other hand, most people cannot afford to buy a house that could withstand a hurricane or tornado.

There were very few homes build to withstand hurricane conditions on Bolivar peninsula. They got slammed during September 2008.
http://geology.com/usgs/hurricane-ike-pictures.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Ike

I do not want to be in the path a hurricane like Andrew or Ike.

 

[lisab]

ACK ! I am back, 29 hours without power ! The storm did not dump much rain, well to the west of us. But the winds were in the 80's, gusts, I where I live. I went outside about 1 pm on Sunday and had to lean into it. I know what 80 mph feels like because I do it (every once in awhile, cough cough... on my beast of a bike). We were lucky because if the rain had buried us we would be a week without power, because of ten times the number of trees being down. I took some HD video if the front yard, tree's bending in big wind gusts and got sand blasted at the beach taking more DD video. I will post in the next couple of days, and provide a link.

For sure a 2000 watt gas generator will be on my short term list, if we had gotten 10 or more inches of rain, my basement would have flooded for sure. My backup plan was to put bailing buckets near the sump hole, great plan, huh ?

The generator would allow us to keep the pump, fridge and one TV running, perhaps the modem and router and one laptop as well.

We dodged a bullet. BTW the island I live on was knocked out by one of those huge towers that hold three high tension wires on each side, the deliver about 440,000 volts each, one of the insulators failed in the wind and dropped the high voltage line on the ground, causing it to FAIL !

The failure maybe lack of maintenance on the insulator's, can't be sure, but it knocked out about 40,000 people's power. There are coming back, one zone at a time. Both hurricane Bob and Gloria pummeled the same wires with 110 - 120 mph wind gusts, but those same insulators did not fail that time, hard to say for sure what caused it.

I was starting to have PF withdrawal, and I must say, it isn't pretty, anyway I am back.
Did anyone miss me ? Turbo ? I haven't read to the end of the thread yet so I apologize. I will after I post this.

Rhody...

Welcome back, Rhody !