From Samiyala to Uncle Sam's: March 2010

Tonight I'm going to go a little 'old school' after quite some time - posting a blog entry in the era of Facebook, Twitter and so on. But the topic that I want to write about tonight can't really fit in the Facebook status updates.

As many of us have experienced so far, this winter has been pretty unusual in all respects. 3-4 major snow storms dumping snow all across North-East with amounts not seen in decades. And just when everybody thought the unusual weather of February 2010 was over - the snow became water from the sky.

It has been raining since yesterday, but it just seemed like one of the many days when we get get and nobody cares. But since this morning or may be last night itself, the wind has been blowing heavily. Just when I thought I have seen all kinds of extreme weathers - be it 45 deg C (around 115 F) burning sun in India or feet and feet of snow in Buffalo or the storm of Oct 2006 in Buffalo - I've been proven wrong. More was yet to come.

Today's winds got me scared for the first time in my life as far as weather related fear is concerned (the other thing that scares me is snakes ;)). I've been looking out of my window again and again since this morning and the rains and winds haven't stopped for a minute. At times the winds gusts were so loud I thought I'll go deaf. And mean that quite literally - you don't want to listen to that when it blows at 50-60 miles an hour. Living in my current apartment has made me realize what the sound of blowing wind really means. After all I've been hearing that for almost past 3 years, and when it blows it gets very spooky especially at nights. And living on the top floor of a 20 story building only aggravates the effect. There have been numerous days when the sound of winds combined with the EMS/911 responses of the nearby hospitals St. Peters and Robert Woods Johnson have filled my ears.

Anyways, but today has been the mother of all. It has been so bad that at one point in the morning I thought the wind is going to break the door to my balcony along with the window beside it, together they cover more than 75% of that wall. That's how hard it has been slamming the glass partition.

So bad was the fear that I moved my bed away from the balcony door, I wasn't going to surprise if the wind broke it. If it fell inside, I would be crushed ;), better safe than sorry. I am still surprised that everything including the building itself has survived so far. Moving on, so later in the afternoon I noticed that rain water has been leaking inside the apartment from the balcony door and window. Now, that was totally unexpected. Slowly but steadily significant amount of water had crept up inside. With lack of any sophisticated tools at hand I had to resort to simply paper towels to soak the water and some futile attempts to block the leakage completely. But there were too many ways for the water to get in apparently. But for a while I thought water had stopped coming in, I was caught again by surprise when I found traces of water almost 10 feet away from the balcony side after 4-5 hours. Mine is a wooden floor and apparently the water stream had found a path underneath the wooden tiles and made its way and made a little puddle right in the middle of the room. This did wet my cotton 'gadda' a little bit from underneath, thankfully the damage wasn't that bad and once again I had to move it.

Hopefully everything will be quiet when I wake up tomorrow morning ;). But when this is all over, there will be hundreds of trees fallen down, flooding rivers and houses without electricity all across the tri-state area.

It seems the 2012 prophecy is coming to reality all too soon and may be who knows aided by the global climate change as well! ;)

And the local news on Fox 5 NY.

Next Morning Update:
Raritan River: