Share: 

Sandy driving barometer way down!

dennis_forney
October 29, 2012
Enjoying a hurricane hike along Freeman Highway Monday afternoon are (l-r) Zach Halter, Conor McLaughlin and Jimmy Wheatley. BY DENNIS FORNEY
Here's where the barometer stood when I left the house at about 1 p.m. to head for Milton.
This is how far the barometer had dropped in the two hours I was gone - lower than I've ever seen the barometer before. When I posted this blog at just about 5:30 p.m., with Sandy's eye just east of Cape Henlopen, the barometer was all the way down to 950 millibars which is definitely serious weather territory. The gold needle is the set needle to show how far the barometer is falling.  The black needle is the one that shows actual barometric pressure.
Our distribution manager, Joni Weber, had the unhappy experience of posting on Facebook that she just heard a tree fall on her house in the Pintail neighborhood near Milton.  We were nearby and stopped to make sure things weren't too crazy.  The tree was a shallow-rooted poplar.  Its neighbor, a more firmly rooted oak, showed no signs of giving up.
Tim Pepper, a Verizon employee, was one of those out in Sandy's wrath standing by to help people retain their internet, phone and video signals.  At this point he was in Milton backing up another employee helping to get the Town of Milton's service back up and running.
In Milton's Memorial Park, the USS Milton had no problem handling the Broadkill's flooding tide.
These two grand old Victorians on Milton's Union Street on the upper reaches of the Broadkill River have seen more than their share of flooding waters over the past century.
And at 5:47 p.m., the barometer was still falling.  I'll be happy when it starts rising again.

Sandy has driven the barometer down to territory I've never seen before and that's not good. As the light goes down and the storm races closer to the coast, the wind is rising, electric is flashing and it's all getting very pooky! Still, some people are taking advantage of some of the most dynamic weather we've ever seen to get right out in it and feel part of it.

This afternoon I saw a young man unloading a bicycle with big balloon tires from the back of his truck in the parking lot of Dairy Queen on Lewes Beach. I think he might have been heading to beach to let the northwest wind drive him eastward toward the ferry terminal. Then I saw three frogmen hiking along Freeman Highway. They were having a good time.

 

 

Most Popular

Subscribe to the CapeGazette.com Daily Newsletter

Most Popular