[update: video added at the end!]
This first one had the amusing caption: A gust just took a tree on 22nd and 7th. Weird, it's not that windy yet. #Sandy #nyc #unpredictable
This one fell at Boston College early in the day, severed from its roots at the base...and the tree below, hit by a train, had been dead so long it didn't even have any bark.
Here's what I found in my driveway this morning.
A large branch from a honey locust lays on the wire. Wires are down in every direction, I discovered.
One of a long row of pines that are painfully thin on Lamington Road came down.
So many of their needles had turned yellow, and they fell off in the storm, plastering the road.
My laptop battery is about to die so I haven't time to say much, and judging from the many impassable roads and lines I saw down, power will not be restored any time soon. Like Irene, which was mostly a disaster due to heavy rains and inland flooding, Sandy's main impact has been the storm surge along the coast. The winds in both cases weren't that extraordinary, and yet the falling trees and resulting loss of power in both cases were huge. Once again, people have died from a falling tree - two parents in Mendham, a nearby town, right in front of their children who were inside their pickup truck at the time...what a horror they will never forget. When will people figure out that trees are dying from ozone pollution? Maybe never. They'll stupidly think it's just, um, weird.