What Sandy Was Like In Washington Heights

If you've turned on the news in the past 24 hours, you've seen the mass amounts of devastation along the entire East Coast from Hurricane Sandy last night. We live in Manhattan, but far uptown from where all the major problems of flooding and power loss are in NYC. We are 100 blocks from Midtown and that dangling crane and 150 blocks from where the flooding and major power loss begins. We love our neighborhood, and we love it even more this morning for being a safe haven knowing how bad things are for our Manhattan neighbors and the other boroughs.

The above pictures were all taken out our window yesterday at noon, 4:00 PM, and 6:00 PM.  The crazy thing is the main part of the storm didn't reach us until after dark!

We decided to venture outside around 4:00 PM (a good four hours before the worst of the storm was here) just to see what it was like.  [This was also my first time outside in a whole week!]  It was insanely windy on the avenues; we took an umbrella out because it was raining, but there's no way it would have survived if we had opened it!  The winds had already gotten to some tree branches and a few more were hanging precariously.  We only walked around one square block and that was enough for me!

During the storm, the worst part was the wind making our building sway.  There were a couple hours were the wind was consistently at 50 mph or above, and I could feel the swaying so much it was making me motion sick!  Then Scott pointed out that all the clothes hanging in his closet were SWINGING.  Oh my gosh.  Unsettling.

We are, thankfully, not among the 7 million people without power, although the majority of Lower Manhattan apparently is.  Last night, looking across the river, most of New Jersey was also completely dark.  We never lost power or internet.  We also live on one of the highest parts of Manhattan, essentially atop a gigantic hill, so there's no flooding to worry about here. 

Basically, for us, the whole experience was pretty much like a bigger-than-usual rainstorm.  Considering the many pictures and videos of devastation shown all across the news, we obviously lucked out.

To anyone else on the East Coast, hope you are safe and dry and warm!  Let's send all our prayers to those recovering from devastation, those stranded somewhere, all of our servicemen and women, and the crews who will be coming in to help.  Safety to all!

P.S.  What it was like for us during Hurricane Irene.