Results tagged “hurricane”

While Hog Island used to be the family vacation spot for Tammany Hall politicians, after surfacing off the coast of the Rockaways in the mid-1800s, it was no match for Mother Nature. Ephemeral NY revisits the old destination spot, which "featured the usual late-19th century bathing facilities, pavilions, restaurants, and regular ferries," noting how by the late 1800s the sea swallowed it back up, whole!

While it's a beautiful, almost crisp morning, it seems to confirm what we suspected—it's summer's last hurrah because Tropical Storm Danny—or at least its effects— is headed our way. The American Red Cross has already issued a hurricane alert to Long Island—apparently Danny could become a Category 1 hurricane. Of course, Newsday notes, "Forecasters warn storm-tracking paths are unpredictable. The storm is expected to arrive about 100 miles east of Montauk Point by Saturday night, but the margin of error is 150 miles east or west of that, said meteorologist David Wally at the National Weather Service in Upton." Today's high is expected to be 78 degrees.

Almost 2 million residents along the Lousiana coast have evacuated the region as Hurricane Gustav is expected to hit today. After his mandatory evacuation of New Orleans, Mayor Ray Nagin revealed he would be staying in the city, sleeping in City Hall. Nagin also warned, "Looters will go directly to jail. You will not get a pass this time. You will not have a temporary stay in the city. You will go directly to the Big House."

Mayor Bloomberg and the New York City Office of Emergency Management have announced 10 winners in the contest to design temporary housing for the thousands of New Yorkers who might be displaced in the event of a catastrophe, like a direct hit from a Category 3 hurricane. The 117 submissions from 30 countries had to create quickly assembled housing for 38,000 families from Prospect Shore, a fictional neighborhood set along a mile of the New York City coastline.

What’s worth watching on food-TV this week? We're definitely setting our DVR to record The Martha Stewart Show. She’s got a three great New York Italian chefs on today: Odetta Fada of San Domenico, Lidia Bastianich of Felidia and Del Posto, and pastry chef Gina DePalma of Babbo. On Tuesday she’s got cookbook editor Judith Jones, and on Wednesday, New Orleans chef Susan Spicer (Monday-Friday, 1pm, NBC). But the prime time highlight might be a...

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a shooting on Flatbush Ave. in Brooklyn, a high-angle rescue on West 18th St., in Manhattan, and a multi-vehicle accident on Farmers Blvd. and the South Conduit in Queens.
• Hoboken mayor David Roberts was apparently prescient to ask how many stops his SWAT team made on the trip back north--fearing more embarrassing photos of his police force as they returned from relief efforts after hurricane Katrina. Additional pictures of misbehavior have surfaced, this time featuring the town's police chief cavorting in Louisiana.
• Brooklyn native and former heavyweight boxing champ Mike Tyson was sentenced in an Arizona court to 24 hours in jail and three years probation for drug possession and DUI.
• The 2nd Ave. subway got a boost from $1.7 billion in federal funding earmarked for the project over the next seven years.
• New Yorkers aren't just cooler and better looking than the rest of the country, they make a lot more money. The average Manhattanite made more than $2,800 a week in the first quarter of this year.
• Former mayor Rudy Giuliani recommended securing the U.S.-Mexico border via a "virtual" system that would alert authorities of crossings.
• The Washington Post has a guide on how to get to NYC that includes more than "practice, practice, practice." It could be valuable for people wanting to get back to NYC.
• A very helpful guide to long- and short-distance runs in Brooklyn from the Brooklyn Road Runners Club.

Hoboken disbanded its SWAT team this week after another scandal rocked the police department of the tiny New Jersey town across the river. A number of minority officers recently filed a lawsuit accusing a high-ranking co-worker of behaving like a white supremacist, regularly deriding minorities. Now the SWAT team has been disbanded days after photos became public showing the unit's commander and other cops cavorting with waitresses at a Hooters restaurant in Alabama. The Mile...

It's a tie! Last month managed to tie 1947 as the warmest October in the 150+ years of Central Park weather observations. The last time the park had a record warm month was February 2002. The difference between sharing the record warm October with 1947 and breaking that old record was as small as could be. If the high or low temperature for any day last month been one degree higher October 2007 would have held the record outright.

is considered a classic. It contains recipes such as Blood Cake with Fried Eggs, Tripe Gratin, and Crispy Pig’s Tail. Stuff like that. This isn’t stunt eating, Fear Factor-style, nor is Henderson’s food supposed to be particularly innovative, but it is. The chef’s “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing” approach to cooking simultaneously emphasizes frugality and simplicity. In some sense, that's almost unheard of these days.

Giving Proper Credit to CBS 2 and Scott Weinberger

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a home invasion robbery on 11th St. in Brooklyn, an unusual rescue on Selwyn Ave. in the Bronx, and a shooting on Rugby Rd. and Foster Ave. in Brooklyn.
• The 30-year-old homeless man charged with raping and torturing a Columbia student in her apartment in April was found mentally fit to stand trial.
• Negotiations between Thor Equities and several Coney Island boardwalk tenants are nearly settled, allowing many attractions to remain through next summer.
• New York magazine notes that NYC may soon receive a movie theater that has a no-children-under-the-age-of-six policy.
• Norman Hsu, one of Sen. Clinton's primary fundraisers during her run for the Presidency, is being charged by federal prosecutors with running a Ponzi scheme and defrauding people of tens of millions of dollars.
• A Brooklyn car salesman scammed rides on a fire truck with members of a Bed-Stuy firehouse after producing a forged letter and bearing stolen FDNY gear.
• Not getting too far by striking, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance is now suing the city to prevent the mandatory installation of GPS equipment in cabs.
• As he led cops on a 70 mph chase through the streets of Flatbush before allegedly shooting officer Dillon Stewart, accused killer Allan Cameron was watching a porn movie on the DVD player in his Infiniti.
• Best use of 9/11 in a new fall season program (so far): Kitchen Nightmares, when a Long Island restaurant "owner," upon Gordon Ramsay criticizing him about the state of a kitchen, "blame everything on me! Blame fires in Chicago, Hurricane Katrina, 9-11" (via Television Without Pity)

A week ago, Gothamist was rhetorically asking if our days of 80-degree weather were behind us until next spring. Now it is looking like we will have at least one more warm spell before fall sets in. That got us to wondering what the latest days were that Central Park reached 80 or 90 degrees. We churned through the daily temperature data from 1971 to the present to plot the graph above. The latest date that it warmed to 90 was September 22nd in 1980. The latest 80-degree day occurred in 1979 on October 22nd. The median latest 90 degree day is August 24th, and the median last 80-degree day is September 23rd. In 1993 the last 90- and 80-degree days were the same day, September 15th.

We were tempted this morning to throw up a pretty sky photo from the Gothamist Contribute pool and not write anything because there's not much weather to discuss. The week is starting out cool but will get warmer. By Thursday we should be seeing maximum temperatures in the upper-70s to around 80 degrees as the high pressure system that will dominate the weather this week moves further eastward. Skies are expected to stay mostly clear through the weekend and probably well into next week.

Today's weather forecast features an exciting race between the remnants of surprising Hurricane Humberto and the Canadian Crusher, a massive, cool, dry air mass that has already captured the Great Plains and is quickly moving our way. Humberto, who reminded everyone that there's still a lot to learn about tropical storms, intensified from a tropical depression to a full-fledged hurricane in only 14 hours, is now just a big mess of moisture centered over northern Alabama.

One reason for the unpredictability of a hurricane is that the storm gets big enough to perturb its surrounding environment. When that happens you get a contest of equals in the atmosphere, the tropical system can start to deform the atmospheric around it, and the outcome is uncertain. That didn't happen with relatively weak Tropical Depression Gabrielle. She briefly intensified to tropical storm status, but weakening after touching the Carolina coast she never had the oomph to compete with the rest of the atmosphere. Now she is being squeezed out to sea by a high pressure system over the mid-Atlantic and a weak cold front along the east coast. At best the beaches will sea a bit of rough surf and riptides.

Two types of tropical weather will be the weather story to watch out for over the next several days. You may have noticed that this morning is much more humid than in the past few days. The humidity and warmer air are courtesy of the large high pressure system that has finally moved offshore. The southerly flow of air around the backside of that high pressure system will bring us a day or two of mid-summer weather. Expect today to be sunny and warm, with a high in the mid-80s. A few clouds may move in tomorrow, but it should remain warm and humid. Warm weather, humidity and a nearby front add up to a chance of showers, or a thunderstorm, beginning Saturday night and into Sunday.

The string of pleasant, if not all that meteorologically interesting, weather continues today with another sunny, mild day. More of the same is expected tomorrow, though the mercury may crack the 80 degree mark. The Weather Service has finally come to their senses and backed off their earlier prediction of highs around 90 on Friday and Saturday. They are currently calling for highs around 86, which is more in line with weather.com's predictions of the lower-80s. The next chance of rain is Sunday at the earliest.

The weather has gotten into the Labor Day spirit and decided not to work this week. Tomorrow will be a near-repeat of today. A weak cold front will cool us down slightly midweek. Highs on Wednesday and Thursday will be in the upper-70s. It should be warmer by the end of the week when the center of a high pressure system sits to our east. The National Weather Service says it will warm up to 90 on Friday and Saturday. Gothamist has no idea why they think it will get that warm. The Weather Channel's low-80s by Friday prediction seems more realistic to us. All in all an excellent week for the U.S. Open.

A look at some noteworthy television this week:

There are a lot of obscure weather and climate statistics and records. Two of Gothamist's favorites are the record low high temperature and the record high low temperature. Yesterday we had one of the former. The combination of being in a cold air mass and under heavy cloud cover also tied 1911 (WCBS didn't give the exact date) as having the lowest high temperature of any day in August.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a possible abduction on West 15th St. and Surf Ave. in Brooklyn, a water main break on Broadway in Manhattan, and an escaped prisoner at Bainbridge St. and Rockaway in Brooklyn.
• Jamaican-New Yorkers were worrying about friends, relatives, and countrymen as Hurricane Dean was bearing down on the island nation. Fortunately, Jamaica escaped the full brunt of the storm.
• Emily "Pemmy" du Pont Frick feels that its "a tragedy" that her mom is holed up in a sick home for the impoverished, but "This is what happens when you get old and run out of money." And that is apparently how you become and stay extremely rich, like Frick.
• A number of Brooklyn kennels, centered around Park Slope, are experiencing an outbreak of a dog-cough virus that makes canines sound like they are cats coughing up hairballs. That is just humiliating.
• A dealer at a used car lot in Champlain, NY heard one of his Pontiac's engines purring and it took a number of mechanics to retrieve the now-adopted black cat named Motor Oil from under the hood. WNBC has fantastic footage regarding the story.
• Marcos Diaz successfully completed his 60-mile, twice-around-Manhattan swim yesterday after approximately 22 hours. The feat of endurance was accomplished to raise funds for Dominican kids suffering from leukemia.
• A Staten Island woman was awarded $135,000 by her daughter's insurance company after she was attacked by a deer. A mounted deer-head trophy fell off the wall as the babysitting grandmother was retrieving a safety gate in the garage for her grandkids and received a large gash on the side of her head.

Hurricane Dean continues to gain strength as it heads toward the Yucatán peninsula. The hurricane, with sustained winds of 150 miles an hour, may intensify to a category 5 storm before it hits land tomorrow. Dean is currently expected to cross the Yucatán near the Mexico-Belize border, where it will weaken, then regain strength over the Bay of Campeche before slamming into northern Mexico. The storm passed a hundred miles south of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, with neither country adding to the storm's death toll of eight people across the Caribbean.

This afternoon's temperature has been bouncing up and down as the sun struggles to come out behind the cruddy clouds. This morning's clouds were leftover from a bit of convective activity to our south last night. A line of showers is approaching the city from the west. Some of those showers may be intense, as they hit the city later this afternoon and into the evening.

Another sunny and mild day is on tap for today. The wind has shifted to come out of the southwest ahead of an approaching cold front. The wind shift means we'll see slightly warmer, with a high close to 90, slightly more humid air today. The front is weak and there's not much moisture associated with it so we should stay dry until tomorrow.

So, last week's weather featured intense rain that shut down the subway system, a tornado skipping through Staten Island and Brooklyn, an unbearably steamy afternoon, and a couple days of near-record low temperatures. This week's weather should feature, uh… uh… well, not much of anything other than warm, sunny days.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a shooting on Clarkson Ave. in Brooklyn, another shooting on Madison Ave. in Manhattan, and a pedestrian fatally struck on Cross Bay Blvd. in Queens.
• 1010 WINS conducted an online poll asking "If a hurricane were to hit NYC, do you think the city would be ready?" 84% of respondents answered "Oh heck no -- look what happened Wednesday."
• Chicago police arrested the four men who allegedly bound and robbed Knicks guard center Eddy Curry in suburban Illinois.
• Because city express bus drivers don't have the authority to add stops on their own and the MTA didn't instruct them to, hundreds of express buses with empty seats bypassed soggy commuters at local stops during Wednesday's storm.
• The two largest individual parking ticket scofflaws in NYC, who combined owe more than $90K, have completely reasonable explanations: it was their ex-wives who did all the illegal parking.
• After decades of being isolated as a traffic island monument, the Columbus Memorial in the middle of Columbus Circle is now experiencing the human wear and tear that the rest of the city endures. $5 million is being budgeted to repair the accumulated and recent damage the monument has suffered.
• An aircraft was reported down northwest of the city near an Orange County airport.
• An opinion piece in the New York Times notes that while recent outrages over violence against animals garnered media attention and resulted in quick arrests, the brutal deaths of illegal immigrants quickly faded into the media-woodwork.

While this morning's commute seems better, most mass transit riders are still confused, frustrated and even betrayed by the subway system and other rail service coming to a stand still during the Wednesday morning rush hour. The MTA admitted that the service was not acceptable on many accounts, from the flooding to the fact that the MTA's website was overwhelmed. Then there's also the fact that the MTA was urging people not to take the subways and opt for a bus instead, only for buses to be (A) few and far between and (B) crowded as anything.

Today's morning subway and bus commute should be a lot smoother (unless you need to stop at Grand Central) than yesterday's messy commute. There were a number of subway disruptions and diversions due to flooding from the rain, which left many straphangers frustrated. But why did pouring rain stop the subway? Well, here's what the MTA says:

NYC Transit utilized portable pumps and pump trains to help clear 600 feet of 2-foot-deep water across all four tracks on the Queens Boulevard line near 65th Street in Queens today. As a result, service was restored on the E, F and R lines just before rush hour, although commuters should expect some delays.