Cheeky Sandy

Just as everybody was waiting for the eye of hurricane Sandy to make landfall at around 00:00 GMT today the tropical cyclone that makes up the hurricane's eye suddenly collapsed meaning that it was technically no longer a hurricane. However this only meant that the hurricane had stopped sustaining itself so in practical terms this meant very little in terms of wind speeds on the ground. When it made landfall the storm brought with it a 4m (13ft) storm surge completely overwhelming flood defences putting most of Manhattan in New York under water. This flooding destroyed the power infrastructure blowing up electrical sub-stations, flowed into the subway system putting it out of action for at least the next 3-4 days and flooded the basement of the Tisch Hospital knocking out back-up generators forcing the hospital to be evacuated. In neighbouring New Jersey levees broke in Bergen County flooding the town of Moonachie. Levees were also breached in Connecticut leading to extensive flooding and forcing the the emergency services to rescue people in Greenwich and Bridgeport. The centre of the storm is now over Pennsylvania west of Philadelphia and heading towards Canada. Where Sandy has met the western snow front across West Virginia heavy snowfall of around 3-4 inches per hour are being reported. Miraculously only 15 deaths have so far being reported adding to 1 in Canada and the 67 killed as Sandy made it's way across the Caribbean. The main problem now in the US is that some 7 million homes are without power.

By way of offering their deepest sympathies Japan decided that this would be the perfect time to discover a World War 2 unexploded US shell at the Sendai airport which of course was badly damaged during the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Hopefully the decision to issue a warning for the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in New Jersey was the US' way of conceding that their response to that disaster was less then helpful. Far more annoyingly (for me) Britain has decided to shut off the electricity to a few of the blocks around my home in the hope of engaging the US in a lenghty discussion about 'power restoration efforts.' On the plus side though apparently Chris Brown is about to cut a cheque to help out Queens - the standard tax for being a prat in a crisis.

13:30 on 30/10/12.