Dan's Papers - August 15, 2008

Earlier this year, the Colorado State University hurricane forecast team - from safely up on high ground - issued its predictions for this year's hurricane season on the East Coast. They said that it would be "above average," with about eight hurricanes scheduled to go through this area, of which four would be major hurricanes. They've been totally wrong every year for the last five years, but since we haven't had any hurricanes, they say we are due for a big season.

My prediction - and I am an amateur who is simply observing the facts as I see them - is that no hurricanes will make landfall on the East Coast this year at all.

During the last five years, how many major hurricanes have hit here? None. How about along the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico. Maybe a hundred? What is wrong with Colorado? It used to be the other way around. Just one or two in the Gulf of Mexico. And the rest along the eastern seaboard.

It's quite apparent that all the hurricanes that form in the Atlantic get sucked in under the big Florida peninsula to rattle around there until they hit something. We've had New Orleans. We've had Honduras. We've had Texas. It's like when you have a casement window and a fly is on the screen. If you raise the window, the fly gets caught up between the two windowpanes. After a while it hits something. Finally it dies. That's what Florida is doing for us folks in the Northeast these days.

Oh, we've had a few hurricanes form up in the Atlantic north of Florida that would be capable of making landfall here. But they don't. They go charging up parallel to the coast and, about a thousand miles out at sea, disappointed at not having hit anything, they peter out.

Is this a passing phenomenon? I don't think so. I think this is a whole change in the weather patterns caused by global warming. The ice packs are breaking up in the Arctic. They're breaking off the shelf in the Antarctic. Why not a modest change in hurricane direction?

The real problem that has now sprung up here, at least in the Northeast, are these vicious thunder and lightning storms. The skies darken, all hell breaks loose - with the last one we even had hailstones - and 15 minutes later it is all over. We've had at least six in the last eight weeks, at least two of which seem to have been accompanied by tornadoes. One was on Monday. Lightning has struck houses and melted electric appliances. In East Moriches, a lightning bolt came through the chimney and melted all the linoleum tiles in someone's basement after ruining all the appliances. We've had people killed standing under trees. We've had second-degree burns on people on golf courses. We need a National Lightning and Thunder Institute, not a university hurricane forecast team. Maybe they can build one in Vancouver for those of us on the East Coast.

I have to say I much prefer the hurricanes we used to have. At least you knew they were coming and what strength they were and what to expect. There was time to leave the area if you wanted to. With the lightning bolts it's just every man for himself and no place to hide. It's totally random. It's enough to make you believe in God. They're his will, these lightning bolts. They hit the good and the bad without distinction. He has his reasons.

And also they hit boats, telephone poles, trees and tall buildings. We need some help here.

Keeping yourself safe, or as safe as possible, from lightning, thunder and tornadoes is a whole lot different from keeping yourself safe from hurricanes. So here's what you need to do.

No worries. Count slowly to 10, and each number you count between the lightning and thunder will be one more mile that you are from it. If you can count to 20 for that interval, your hearing is far better than mine. Unless you're a dog, thunder can't hurt you.

The best place to sit out a tornado is in a reinforced concrete underground shelter. Next best is a basement, preferably a concrete basement, and preferably in a small room in a concrete basement where debris is least likely to fall on you. Sit under a heavy object such as a strong table, lean forward and clasp your hands together over the back of your head. Tornadoes almost always come from the southwest, so try to get yourself in the northeastern part of your basement.

The worst place to be in a tornado is in your car. If you see or hear one coming, pull off the road, get out of the car and lie flat in a small ditch. Mobile homes are no good either. If you have time, get out of them and into another place as described above.

If you are in a building that does not have a basement, follow the above procedures on the lowest floor. Hallways are best.

Tornadoes can come at anytime, anyplace - just listen for a strong wind or whine or whooshing sound. And move fast.

Never try to outrun a tornado.

Unfortunately, there is no best place to be during a lightning storm. It hits anywhere. The idea is that wherever you are, you should try to be clear of the mechanism that conducts the lightning down from the top of the structure into the ground. Staying in homes or buildings with metal piping, electrical wiring or metal gutters and metal lightning rods on the roof is your best bet to survive a lightning strike. Lightning will travel through the electrical, phone, plumbing and radio/TV reception systems, metal wires or bars in concrete floors and walls. Don't be near any of that. Most importantly, do not be on a corded phone during a lightning storm. Stay away from glass doors and windows, washers, dryers, stoves and concrete walls or floors that might have steel reinforcing bars in them. Do not wash dishes, do laundry, take a shower or wash your hands.

You are not safe in a barn or shed. And though a car will conduct a lightning strike into the ground via the rubber in the tires, you are probably too close to the glass and metal of the structure of it.

During the long Depression of the 1930s, there were a lot of Public Works projects for the unemployed. One of them, after the terrible lesson of the Hurricane of 1938, was the installation of thousands and thousands of steel hurricane cables here in the Hamptons that went from bolts on the foundation of a house up and across the roof, over the shingles and then back down to be bolted to the foundation of the house on the other side.

These cables were intended to keep people's homes from flying away during a hurricane. They were never tested, and never really given a fair chance to work, because three years later, when America went to war against Japan and Germany, and the government realized that steel and aluminum were in short supply, they had almost all of these cables, as a further Works project, unbolted and taken down to be donated to the war effort.

If your house was built prior to 1942, check to see if the cables are still installed. If they are, have them removed. Tornadoes have much higher winds than hurricanes, and these cables were intended to keep houses from being blown off their foundations sideways by a hurricane. Tornadoes, on the other hand, lift things straight up, and with their greater sudden force can cause both your house and basement to go flying away as a single unit. You are advised to go to a basement when a tornado comes. But do not go to your basement if it has hurricane cables. Instead, run to the basement of a neighbor's house.