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Earl now just a tropical storm

By adamg on Fri, 09/03/2010 - 11:18pm

The National Hurricane Center downgrades Earl.

And with that, the French Toast Alert System goes back into storage, hopefully not to be dredged out until this winter.

Topics: 
Weather
Free tagging: 
Hurricane Earl
Hurricanes


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Comments

By fibrowitch on Fri, 09/03/2010 - 11:23pm.

Gave the French Toast index a shout out during today's show. Today Public radio, tomorrow basic cable!!

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By O-FISH-L on Fri, 09/03/2010 - 11:53pm.

A good friend is in the commercial generator business. Not the Honda generators you see at Home Depot, but the 18 wheeler variety and larger, stuff that can power a skyscraper on diesel fuel. He and his staff have been straight out all week, hospitals, newspapers, TV and radio stations, restaurants, even cruise ships etc., all over New England, paying a fortune just in case they lost power. The bills will be in the tens of millions. I told him he owes the weathermen a payoff!

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By J on Sat, 09/04/2010 - 3:52am.

I find that a bit hard to believe. Hospitals, for example, should always have a generator. Cruise ships make electricity with their own engine!

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By O-FISH-L on Sat, 09/04/2010 - 4:38am.

@J: I'm not a mechanical engineer or anything close, but I believe the ships that stayed in Boston waiting out the "storm" rely on shore power. Even though they have emergency lighting, I don't think they're allowed to run their engines and generators at port to provide full power to the ship. It's much cheaper to have the backup generator there "just in case" than to put everyone up in a hotel or provide refunds.

Likewise for all the hospitals / nursing homes in Barnstable, Plymouth, Norfolk, Bristol, Dukes and Nantucket counties who had advanced warning of a "hurricane". They all may have in house generators for emergency lighting and emergency outlets, but xxx,xxx amount for the weekend to guarantee operations run smoothly is usually cheaper than the lawsuit for granny who died when her ventilator shut down.

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By eeka on Sat, 09/04/2010 - 5:49pm.

Yes, in every hospital I've worked in, the red/orange outlets are connected to the backup generator, and ventilators and things that have to stay on are only plugged in to those outlets. When telling you this during orientation, they tell you about how they have enough generator power to have these outlets and the emergency lighting and whatnot remain on for somewhere around 24 hours depending on the place and their setup. And these are gas generators usually, so they'd fill them up if the power were out much longer.

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By Eighthman on Sat, 09/04/2010 - 9:15am.

And if the power had gone out? The vagaries of our atmosphere spared us this time. Next time could be very different. But it's reassuring that people took the situation seriously.

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By anon on Sat, 09/04/2010 - 1:12pm.

Or lost a fortune. The Back Bay Hotel, where rooms apparently go for 200-300 dollars a night ran a special where if you booked a room this weekend you'd pay in dollars what the windspeed at Logan in MPH was sometime yesterday. Apparently it was 25 mph! That's a steep discount.

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By J on Sat, 09/04/2010 - 4:00pm.

Well, if the rooms would have been empty, 25 is still better than zero.

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By anon on Sat, 09/04/2010 - 5:27pm.

Why did UH not alert me to this offer?

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By Jenn on Sat, 09/04/2010 - 1:02am.

"Dredged"...hee hee!

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By Anon on Sat, 09/04/2010 - 7:51am.

"Dredged," huh?

The secret hiding place for the French Toast Alert System must either be at the bottom of the Charles... or under the Weston water main.

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By adamg on Sat, 09/04/2010 - 9:33am.

Amanda Wild summed up media coverage of the storm with this graphic:

Wild weather coverage

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By O-FISH-L on Sat, 09/04/2010 - 12:19pm.

Adam, don't go too far with the French Toast Alert system. NWS/NHC reporting a 70% that Gaston will be getting it's act together in the next 48 hours. Let the games begin, again.
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/gtwo_atl.shtml

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By Michael Kerpan on Sat, 09/04/2010 - 3:19pm.

... has taken an nonthreatening path.

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By anon on Sat, 09/04/2010 - 1:12pm.

This is probably the most overhyped storm since that bogus "snowpocalypse" earlier in the year.

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By Kaz on Wed, 09/08/2010 - 12:35pm.

And with that, the French Toast Alert System goes back into storage, hopefully not to be dredged out until this winter.

Tropical Storm Eye-gor. It just formed off the coast of Africa and it *started* as a tropical storm! In a week or two we could be looking at a real doozy heading up the Eastern Seaboard again.

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