I did mention “wind stations” (found at local weather stations and airports) as well, not just buoys. At the height of the weather here, we got40- 50 MPH sustained for 5-6 hours with frequent gusts in the 60’s and one at the Richmond airport that read 71 mph. Central Va generally has winds about 5 to 15 when things are calm but the types of trees and land are different here. East of I95 corridor the wind was stronger, hurricaine force for a number of hours. Locals in the Hampton Roads area saw a damage, storm surge and flooding that they feel rivals Isabel in 2003.
A weather person pointed out that when the storm reaches NYC, ground level winds might only be 60-70 MPH but at 30 stories up the winds will be 80 MPH and much higher still at 50 stories on up.
I don’t know what station you saw but I saw one brave reporter in Va Beach, Va who could hardly keep his ground getrting blown around and drenched with rain. Richmond got 6 inches of rain, and areas east got 12 to 15.
I suppose the storm is well passed you now, I hear that the evacuation was lifted at noon.
The point is that storms of this type are just storms, they are not disasters. We get winter storms with 60 mile per hour winds every year. We often have trees over turned, one year, we had 5 trees over turned. They looked just like the ones the overturned trees we are seeing on the weather station, with the root ball over six feet tall. Twice, now, when my husband went out with his chain saw to cut up the trees, when he removed the top of the tree, the rest of the tree righted itself and started growing from the trunk.
We have also had these storms at super high tide and had flooding along the low lying coast. People expect it and the enviro-nazis forbid the people to do anything to prevent it.