[justa-hairyape]

It is official now. According to Fox. No longer a Hurricane. And since it has combined with the cold storm that was west of Sandy, it no longer has a true eye, so they have backed off on calling landfall. My guess is this has not been a hurricane for the past 24 hours. There is no way Sandy maintained sustained winds of exactly 75 mph for a day and a half. That surface wind speed is just an approximation based on the upper wind speeds measured by the search planes. In the reality of nature, there had to be some fluctuations if the sustained winds of 75 mph were accurately measured directly. They keep the sustained wind speed 2 mph above tropical storm level at exactly 75 mph for at least a day and a half. It probably strengthened a little when it went over the Gulf Stream, but 90 MPH sustained is just impossible in a hurricane that was getting its western side ripped clean by the cold front.

[SamAdams76]

Here in New England (MA/NH border), the storm is starting to peter out. We did have some high winds this afternoon that brought some trees and branches down with scattered power outages but no major damage. Maybe a couple inches of rain which is now starting to subside. Pretty much your typical northeaster in these parts with the exception that the winds are stronger than we usually see.

A year ago at this time, I was without power for four days (Halloween snowstorm) but have not lost it in this storm yet and hopefully that remains the case.

Good news is that most of New England should be getting back to normal tomorrow and we can turn our focus back to Tuesday's election (and Halloween on Wednesday).

[rurgan]

I agree with your post.

[dirtboy]

The main concerns all along for this storm were surge and widespread power outages. Both came to pass - and NYC, Long Island and the Jersey Shore got hammered by surge. This is at least a 20 billion dollar disaster and could end up being the second-worst hurricane damage in US history.

So please give it a rest.