No what about bowtie ?
Thanks for asking Earl.

Glad to see your post AB, hope things get back to normal for you ASAP.

Apparently i live in a very unique little area. This thing(Sandy) raised it's hackles and roared at us Monday evening, and threatened to be a major conflagration. By about 9pm the wind all but stopped. It was so quiet here at my house that we could hear the wind roaring thru treetops a thousand feet above us a mile or so away.

It seems that the storm/winds approached us from a direction that allowed the Catskill Mountains to effectively cast a shadow of calm over us. Our fire dept was the only dept in the county that didn't receive a single dispatch. Within our township there is hardly a branch out of place. While we saw the lights dim far too many times to count, we never lost power. I can travel about 5 miles in any direction and encounter trees/wires down, and our local power provider warns that some in this area will be several days without power as they're down to skeleton crews here with most being deployed downstate.

In contrast i made a trip down to Newburgh(about halfway to NYC from here) yesterday afternoon to take some bottled water and gasoline to my aunt and her neighbors. Below Wurtsboro Mountain it starts looking pretty devastated. The normally 20-30 minute trip from I-86/rte 17 took the better part of 2 hours and some heavy bullshitting with emergency crews, detour after detour. Seems like everywhere there were two utility poles there was a tree on the wires between them. I cannot imagine what it looks like closer to the city.

On the advice of a good friend with "connections" i started prepping for this thing on wed the 24th since i have a very distinct paranoia about flooding after recent experiences. I no longer "poo poo" storm warnings. Nothing you do in preparation is a "waste". If you're spared an impending disaster, consider your preparations a "working drill".

Godspeed to all those suffering and recovering from this mess.