Hurricane Sandy on the way

[Carlb]

Well it looks like the track of Hurricane Sandy will hit just south of us as of this time making landfall in Maryland / Delaware.   We are located in Southern New Jersey about 50 miles East of Atlantic City.  50 to 60mph sustained wind speed expected and about 6" or more or rain.  The electric company has already made robo calls telling customers to expect power outages and not to go near downed power lines (if you are too stupid to stay away from downed power lines I think Darwin need to do his thing).  Well we have plenty of diesel for the listeroid, lots of food in the house and plenty of water on hand to ride out a long power outage if that happens.   

[mike90045]

Good luck, and I hope you all fare well through this.  (My folks are on Cape Cod, and hopefully, they are far enough north to miss the worst of it.)

[LowGear]

Carl?

What's your street address?

Casey

[fuelfarmer]

I am in the western part of Virginia and we should get some wind and rain from the storm. Most of the storm will be well to the east of us. We already did the 5 or 6 days without power this year. I just hope the patch work they did holds up to the wind we could get.

[Henry W]

I have family in Connecticut on Long Island sound and up state N.Y. They are bracing for high winds, rain, flooding in Connecticut and possibly snow in up state N.Y.

We also have forum members in up state N.Y. and Vermont. Everyone is not taking this storm lightly and is hoping for the best.

In Raleigh North Carolina we have overcast weather and in the 60's. We are thankful  it missed.

To all forum members that are in the storms way, please be safe and let us know how you are after it is over.

Henry

[Geno]

I'm in the Lk. George region of upstate NY and am well prepared. We're expecting some pretty good wind but not too much rain. I have lots of friends and family in North NJ and they're in for quite a ride. By a lucky chance my Mom's up here with me.



Glens Falls NY forecast as of 1245 10/28/12
·  Monday Rain likely, mainly after 11am. The rain could be heavy at times. Cloudy, with a high near 58. Breezy, with a northeast wind 14 to 23 mph, with gusts as high as 40 mph. Chance of precipitation is 70%. New precipitation amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch possible.
·  Monday Night Rain. The rain could be heavy at times. Low around 51. Windy, with a east wind 24 to 34 mph, with gusts as high as 60 mph. Chance of precipitation is 90%. New precipitation amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible.
·  Tuesday Rain. High near 63. Breezy, with a southeast wind 18 to 20 mph. Chance of precipitation is 80%. New precipitation amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch possible.
·  Tuesday Night Showers. Low around 48. Chance of precipitation is 80%. New precipitation amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch possible.

Thanks, Geno

[Rom]

Hey hey,

Just sitting here waiting for the power to come back up on this lil rock in the Abacos. Weather is finally starting to calm. I didnt bother to shutter up for this one, underestimated it slightly, but came out fine. Someone clocked 148mph gusts a couple miles from here, so it wasnt as bad as it could be. Be careful on the coasts and low lying areas though, storm surge is trouble. I sunk a golf cart I forgot to move to higher ground. Will be working on pulling the motor and batteries tomorrow and get it cleaned out to fire up. Battery pack looks good, didnt burn the terminals off, just polished the frame around the shorting areas.

Best of luck to everyone in the way of Sandy, I cant begin to imagine how difficult it must be to deal with storms like that in the States.

Rom

[rcavictim]

I have been busy working on the HAWT.  Part of my auto furling and blade stow and braking system will rely on input from a tachometer generator which is made from a substantial Permanent Magnet, 90 VDC brushed motor, which by itself with a 5 foot prop could make a few hundred watts.  I was fortunate to have stumbled across a couple of old style (1960's) weather station anemometer cup assemblies which are mondo sized.  5" cups and about a 16" turning circle.  I now have the output of this little drag cup wind turbine hooked up through to my house.  When the 60 MPH winds hit I'm gonna get maybe 5 watts(?) out of this baby!  Yee Ha! I'll have my very first wind generated electricity running a small light bulb in my house since i began building my wind turbines some six years ago now.    At that point I'll be able to contact Guinness for having built the world's most overkill 5 watt drag cup wind generator.  Seriously though, this storm provides an opportunity for me to evaluate the output I will expect from this instrument in storm wind conditions which will be necessary to know in order to set the sensitivity of the electro-mechanical mechanizm which it is there to power, which includes a small DC gearhead motor who's job is to wind up a spring and physically orient the activate point of several micro switches .

My field is a soggy, muddy swamp.  I am sooo glad I got all that tower work done because there is now no way to even drive my car out there into the field without getting stuck.  With the rain now here and increasing it will get much worse in the next few days.

Diesel generators are ready if we have an outage.  Ran my JD175A plant today for several hours as a test since it hadn't been run in about a year.  At 1600 RPM and a steady 700 watt load it is quiet and runs with 450 degree F. exhaust temp and not much heat coming out of the radiator.  Little fuel in = little heat energy out.  This is to be my primary low wind days battery charging plant.  For real AC power my Changfa 1115 is ready.  The 1500cc VW diesel that it backs up is presently out of service with a starter that let the smoke out rather spectacularly last time I attempted to start that plant.  I need to get a round tuit and swap out that starter but lately all my time has been directed at beating the bad weather and getting the HAWT tower up and ready.  I succeeded!  Just in time too.

I hope that all my friends here who will be affected by the coming storm will stay safe and not suffer loss.

Take good care!

Regards,
rca

[sailawayrb]

Carl,

Hope you get thru this okay.  We had a friend from NJ visting with us over the weekend and he went back on Monday, a couple days earlier than planned so as to be with his family.

Bob B.

[Lloyd]

My Wife's Aunt just called, and told me my favorite trail under the GW bridge is completely submerged. Along with all of the river front waterways.

Lloyd

[Carlb]

haven't been out to survey the damage yet, but we only lost power for about 1 hour and that was in the middle of the night so no need to run the generator.  We only got about 6" of rain out of the storm over a 2 day period so no problems with flooding in my area.   Winds were quite high all of yesterday afternoon until this morning.  things seem to be calming down.   I will go out after sun rise and survey the damage but I think we made out ok.    I was especially concerned for my ground mounted 11.2 Kw solar array since it is 14' tall and 90' wide and sitting at 70 degrees from vertical , and taking the brunt of the storm on the backside,  but it looks ok from the house.

carl

[sailawayrb]

Our friend made it home okay (last flight in).  He lost power yesterday and is still without.  Not much rain and the sun is out today.  He lives in Leonia.

Bob B.

[Henry W]

Here is a picture in Milford, Connecticut. This picture was taken yesterday, and it is about three blocks from where my wife and I lived before we moved to North Carolina. We used to walk on the beach past those houses quite often. Those houses shown in the picture are built much better  than the one we lived in. And the storm wall that you cannot see is much taller than where we lived down the beach. This picture looks to be taken before high tide.

In 1998 we went through a storm much milder during high tide and got flooded. I am wondering how bad the damage is this time.

[quinnf]

My son sent me this.  He said it was making the rounds at Liberty University yesterday.
Made me want to stand in the rain for a little while and think about it.

Quinn

[vdubnut62]

Wow, just one of many things I take for granted.
Brings a lump to my throat and a tear to my eye.
Ron.