I realize that the tinfoilers are always assuming that the authorities are lying and every event is a terror attack (by swarthy-looking gay illegal aliens driving on toll roads) but try and look at the facts. The smell was reported both in Manhattan and Jersey City, which is west of Manhattan. However the wind was from the south and southwest, up from calm during the 8am hour and beyond.
http://www.erh.noaa.gov/data/obhistory/KEWR.html
If it originated in Manhattan, how would a wind out of the south blow it west into Jersey City? But what is south/southwest of both Manhattan and Jersey City? Lots and lots of petrochemical manufacturing plants. Google Earth places like Bayonne, Elizabeth, and Port Reading, NJ, along the water to the north and west of Staten Island. Anyone who has lived anywhere close to Houston's similar ship channel complex of petrochemical plants can tell of times when stinky but harmless smells from these plants would drift and linger over a large area of towns, especially in cloudy winter weather just like NYC is experiencing today.
I think "the authorities" track record leads to a lot of this.
Your explanation makes the most sense. Given the times we live in -- with NYC being number 1 terror target, the "authorities" here really should have had a handle on it early on.
You're most likely exactly right, but the post-9/11 security environment and the proliferation of NYC-baseed media outlets that have a stake in keeping our adrenaline pumping -- and thus tuned into them -- is the perfect storm for making a mountain out of a molehill.
This has happened before in NY. I remember when I was a teenager on Long Island, what they called an "air inversion" (whatever that may be) caused all the rotten smells from the chemical plants in Elizabeth, Bayonne etc. to waft over the city and then over LI. It was a truly, truly horrible smell that I still have sense memory of today. But back in the late 1980s, we just turned on the radio, heard what was going on, and went about our business. Now it turns into a day-long story.
>>>swarthy-looking gay illegal aliens driving on toll roads
I knew it! Golan Cipel farted!
::rim shot::
sorry charlie, you may take their word as gospel, however I am no longer willing to give this administration the benefit of the doubt about anything.
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Methanethiol is released from decaying organic matter in marshes and is present in the natural gas of certain regions in the United States, in coal tar, and in some crude oils.
In surface seawater, methanethiol is the primary breakdown product of the algal metabolite dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSP)....
Methanethiol is also manufactured for use in the plastics industry, as a precursor in the manufacture of pesticides, and as a jet fuel additive. It is also released as a decay product of wood in pulp mills.
On December 26, 2005, dozens of people at a St. Petersburg, Russia Maksidom home supplies store were sickened when gas suspected to be methanethiol was released. The store had received letters threatening to disrupt business during the holiday gift-giving season. Three other stores belonging to the same chain found boxes with glass containers and timers that also might have been rigged to release the gas.