Hurricane update - Saturday noon

Yes, we are awaiting Hurricane Irene.  I thought we would be out of hurricanes once we left the south, but noooo!  We are sitting at the community dock in Waterford, NY where the Hudson River meets the Erie Canal.  You can actually see us on the town's dock cam by clicking on http://208.125.161.182:7111/view/index.shtml.  Be patient, it takes a couple of minutes for the camera to load.

The last 24 hours have been an exercise in "what happens now?"  Yesterday the dock master here in Waterford told us that the Canal Commission would permit docking between locks 3 and 4 as a way to escape the hurricane at 7:00 AM this morning.  We asked if we had to go, or we were just being offered the option.  At that time, the dock master said it was just an option, that they would make a decision about whether or not we could stay where we are on Saturday morning.  I walked up to look at the offered space between locks 3 and 4 and it didn't look like such a great deal to me.  There was lots of space but very few things to tie up to.

Where we are now offers secure tie up on a floating dock.  That is the good news.  Where we are now is also where the Mohawk River empties into the Hudson.  We are 150 miles north of New York, so we're not actually too concerned about the wind, nor are we worried about storm surge.  There is a lock between us and the rest of the Hudson River and it would have to be a legendary storm surge to get this far up the river anyway.  Our concern here is the rain, not the rain as it falls, but the rain as it drains from the Mohawk Valley through the Mohawk River into the Hudson.  If we get a lot of rain from the storm, we'll get flooding where the rivers meet because the Hudson won't be able to absorb all of the run-off from the Mohawk.  The NY State Canal Commission has already begun preparing for possible flooding by letting water out of the Erie Canal to lower the Mohawk before the storm hits.

The dock we are on is a floating dock.  That means it rises and falls as the water level rises and falls, and the boats tied to it rise and fall with the dock.  It is the best docking situation for this type of event.  since they started lowering the Mohawk last night the water here has risen a foot.  We've got about 6-7 more feet that the dock can rise with no problems.  After spending the morning talking with each other, watching the weather forecasts, and speculating about what could happen, about half the folks who were docked here decided to move into the canal and trade the iffy tie-ups for not possibility of flooding.  The rest of us decided to stay with the secure tie-ups and hope the rain isn't as bad up here as it will be further to the east.  Waterford is on the eastern edge of the Mohawk Valley drainage system, so the hard rains would have to be west of us to cause flooding.  Even the most dire track shows the storm will be east of us and most of the tracks have the outermost edge of strong rain running up the Hudson, or east of the Hudson.  So we decided to gamble on the rains not being so bad west of us.

Now it is a wait and see game.  The irony is that for everyone else, after the storm passes it is over.  For us, the flood will arrive, if it is coming, after the storm has gone through.  So we won't know if we made the right decision until some time on Monday most likely.

Ah well, the insurance is paid up.  You pays your money and takes your chances.  Remember, you can watch it all unfold on the town dock camera.

More later.