Preparing for Sandy

New York city has shut down mass transit, NY, NJ, and CT are all in states of emergency, a half dozen of my friend's colleges have been evacuated...welcome to Hurricane Sandy. Or as I prefer, Frankenstorm.  

The chances of two huge, apocalyptical Halloween storms in subsequent years were slim to none, and yet here we are (should I play the lottery?)

Growing up in New Jersey, I'm accustomed to hurricanes, blizzards, and other major storms.  I remember doing American girl crafts during the blackout of August 2003 and building forts during the March storm of 2010 that left towns in my area without power for almost a week.  

Yes, I was a junior in high school during the March storm, but building forts is fun during a blackout no matter how old you are.  

This looks to be one for the books though, as Sandy is the largest storm ever recorded in Atlantic basin history and is expected to affect 50 million people (http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2012/10/28/hurricane-sandy-vs-irene-how-do-big-storms-stack-up). 

I won't know what my plans are until Lehigh sends out their announcement at 5 p.m., but I doubt I'll be able to go home because conditions are supposed to be worse there.    Hopefully we don't lose power or get evacuated, but thankfully I have open invitations to stay at people's houses that live in the area if we are.  

In the meantime, I've been tracking the storm at http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/storm-chasers/live-tracker/live-tracker.html. It is definitely one of the better trackers I've found, plus they have lots of great options to view weather alerts and advisories by area.  

A few of my friends and I went to Wegmans yesterday to get some extra food and all of the cases of water were already sold out.  This morning, I filled up all of the water bottles in my room with water just in case.  I  put my flashlight in a convenient spot and checked the batteries, so I guess I'm as prepared as I can be.  

As expected, social media has been blowing up with news and jokes about the storm. If you live in the Lehigh valley, you can "check into" Frankenstorm on FourSquare (which I plan on doing later tonight).  Some entertaining parody Twitter accounts have also sprung up.  @huricannesandy, @BigFrankenStorm, @aSandyHurricane, and @LVFrankenstorm are all funny.  Besides Governor Christie's twitter and newspaper accounts I haven't found a good weather/news update, so if anyone does feel free to comment with the handle!

Finally, I hope everyone prepares and has enough water and food.  Stay safe!

 Food and water supply

Some of the funny memes on the Twitter parody accounts