Here It Is The Groove Slightly Transformed, Just A Bit Of A Break From The Norm

The beach, the free cultural events, the high heat and unrelenting humidity that makes this the greatest of all cities:

If you haven’t installed your air conditioner yet, Friday might be the day to do it.

That’s because New York this weekend will be sweltering through a brutal heat wave, the first of 2008.

Daytime highs will soar above 90 degrees from Saturday to Monday, according to Accuweather.com. And the high humidity will make those afternoons feel as though it’s hotter than 100.

Friday will be seasonable, but a warm front later in the day will leave hot and sticky air behind it.

“The heat will dominate much of the area. Saturday, Sunday and Monday highs in the 90s are likely from midtown to central New Jersey,” said meteorologist Alan Reppert of Accuweather.com.

Reppert said it will stay warm and humid until Wednesday or Thursday.

. . .

And if you’re not a fan of the hot weather, you may be in for a long summer.

“Temperatures are expected to be above normal for the rest of the summer, running about two degrees above normal,” Reppert said.

The “H” Is “Snow”

He who plays “The Heat is On” on the saxophone in winter weather deserves all the locked keys he gets:

Yes he could go down into the subway and find a warmer stage, but sax player Mike Mycadi says the open air fuels his music. “I actually like the cold better than the summertime,” he says. “It’s more challenging.” Part of that challenge is playing with the thick gloves he wears to keep his fingers agile, and he sometimes practices at home with the gloves. Of course, if the outdoor temperature drops below 32 degrees, the concert must come to an end. “Below freezing and the saliva actually locks up in the keys,” he says. And his playlist? “During the winter I like to play warm songs, like ‘The Heat Is On,’ and ‘Summertime.’ During the summer I switch it around and end up playing things like ‘Let it Snow’ and ‘Frosty the Snowman.'”

See also: Saxophones.

But Don’t Worry — The Office of Emergency Management Has Spent Literally Hours Working On A Disaster Plan

Jeez, Doctor Downer:

The widespread havoc wreaked by two major hurricanes in Central America and Mexico in the past two weeks may be making headlines worldwide, but the idea of a similar catastrophe befalling the five boroughs seems as remote as ever for millions of New Yorkers.

But not for Queens College Professor Nicholas Coch.

. . .

So, what is in the cards for Queens and the city, if and when a hurricane strikes?

The city’s Office of Emergency Management has spent hours trying to answer that question in hopes of formulating an evacuation plan.

Under their doomsday scenario, a Category 3 storm would likely begin brewing in late August off the west coast of Africa. There, a cluster of high-pressure weather systems converge and arrange into a dark swirling mass that starts to make its way across the Atlantic along a current of warm tropical water. Perhaps the hurricane roars across the Caribbean, much the way one did late last month. Eventually, it begins churning north.

But it is unclear whether the storm will end up hitting New York on its northbound route. The hurricane has already charted a predictable course along the so-called “Atlantic conveyor belt,” but once it goes farther north than Florida and the Carolinas, it begins moving erratically and picks up speed — making it increasingly difficult to predict exactly where it will land.

“When you’re viewing it from Cape Hatteras (in North Carolina),” Coch says, “you can sit back, sip a gin and tonic and watch the storm move slowly over the ocean.” But by the time it appears to be on a path toward New York, “you’ve got about six hours to get out . . . Otherwise, forget it: You’re gone.”

As the Category 3 hurricane churns its way up the coast, the mayor and OEM officials are meeting to discuss how they will handle a mammoth evacuation. City officials estimate that anywhere from 2.5 million to 3.4 million people will need to leave their homes in a short amount of time, if the storm starts barreling toward the city.

. . .

But OEM’s evacuation plan, deemed inadequate in a report conducted by the New York State Assembly last year, will be put to the test. City officials must figure out how to stretch their resources — 881 public shelters for an estimated 1.4 million evacuees who say they would need public shelter during a major hurricane, according to an Army Corps of Engineers study.

That is, of course, if New Yorkers actually decide to leave. The cumbersome two-tier system of evacuation will deter many residents from evacuating, the state report found. Some 40 percent of people will decide not to leave when they learn they must first report to a reception center before they are brought to a shelter.

Others will stay at their homes, because they don’t fully appreciate the threat, Coch worries. “In this situation, one of the most dangerous things in New York are the New Yorkers and their New Yorker mentality,” he said. “They don’t want to be told to evacuate, because so many people think a hurricane could never hit here. Just couldn’t happen.

“Of course, by the time it does hit, it’ll be too late for them.”

For residents seeking a reception center, the mere task of arriving at the designated centers will be a challenge, since many locations are not accessible by public transportation. And as severe thunderstorms buffet the city, the transit system seems closer than ever to failing amid the inclement weather and sudden influx of fleeing riders.

Residents who do make it to the centers will be faced with yet another obstacle: transportation from the center to a shelter.

The city has dedicated roughly 6,000 school buses to the evacuation effort, though it’s unclear who will drive them, and the simple logistics of appointing drivers to evacuation vehicles hasn’t been worked out. Under the city’s evacuation plan, regular school bus drivers have been designated for the task, although no one has notified them of their responsibilities, and no one knows which city employees could fill their drivers’ seats if and when they don’t show up.

And then there’s this: “Potential Tropical Storm Could Strike NYC”. Yeesh!

Red State-Blue State Divide Narrows

They’re not in Kansas anymore:

It took experts until late in the afternoon yesterday to confirm what many in southwestern Brooklyn knew had descended on their neighborhoods as a new workday dawned. It was a tornado — the first to hit Brooklyn since modern record-keeping began — and it turned whole sections of Sunset Park and Bay Ridge upside down.

Roofs were torn off houses. More than 30 families were forced from their homes. Tall trees as thick as men were yanked out by the roots. No one was seriously injured, but cars were turned sideways, awnings and aluminum siding shredded, and countless windows and windshields shattered, in a destructive rain of brick and branch and water that concentrated much of its wrath on 58th Street in Sunset Park.

. . .

The National Weather Service declared the storm a Category 2 tornado on the Enhanced Fujita scale, with winds from 111 to 135 miles an hour. It was the first tornado recorded in Brooklyn since record-keeping began in 1950, said Jeffrey M. Warner, a meteorologist at Pennsylvania State University, and only the sixth recorded in New York City since 1950 and the first since a weak one touched down on Staten Island in 2003.

Can A Steamroller Really Stop 1.7 Inches Of Rain From Falling In One Hour Just Before Rush Hour?

The Governor fully intends to give the weather the full Sandy Weill treatment:

After a heavy rainstorm crippled the subway system in September 2004, an investigation laid the blame on New York City Transit, saying that the agency had neglected basic maintenance of its drainage system, and that once the tunnels started to fill with water, the response was haphazard and ineffective.

The agency promised major changes.

But yesterday, the subway was paralyzed again, when a strikingly similar storm dropped 1.7 inches of rain on Central Park between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m., just before the morning rush.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer, with the transportation authority facing an angry public and accusations of incompetence, said yesterday that the measures it had put in place were not enough.

Governor Spitzer gave the Metropolitan Transportation Authority 30 days to come up with a plan to address the chronic flooding problems.

But more importantly, can a steamroller fix the National Weather Service? And can it actually stop global warming?

Elliot G. Sander, the chief executive of the transportation authority, who appeared at a Midtown press conference with the governor, said the torrential rainfall had overwhelmed pumps that routinely move water out of the subway system and had also backed up city sewers, meaning that water pumped out of the subway had nowhere to go.

“The timing and intensity of the storm took us by surprise because it was not predicted by the National Weather Service,” Mr. Sander said.

What happened yesterday was remarkably similar to the events of Sept. 8, 2004, when 1.76 inches of rain fell in Central Park between 6:51 a.m. and 7:51 a.m., according to a report issued by the transportation authority’s inspector general’s office.

The report, issued 18 months after the storm, found that, as in yesterday’s flooding, weather forecasters had not predicted such a heavy rainfall, and that the transit agency had been caught off guard. Authority officials at the time provided the same types of explanations they were offering yesterday, blaming overwhelmed pumps and a city sewer system that could not handle such a large quantity of water.

. . .

In 2004, transit officials referred to the unusually heavy rain that brought the subway system to a halt as “an act of God.” Yesterday, Mr. Sander seemed to hint at a more contemporary, although perhaps no less celestial explanation: climate change.

“We may be dealing with meteorological conditions that are unprecedented,” Mr. Sander said.