Mid-Hudson Valley gripped by Tropical Storm Irene's deluge; flooding, high winds throughout region

Times Herald-record Middletown, NY ^ | 8/28/11 | Staff

[ml/nj]

I didn't read the article, but I can sort of corroborate their story. Racing was canceled in Saratoga today so I headed south around 11:30 AM. When I left I knew that the Thruway was closed at Exit 17 down beyond where I normally get off (Exit 15). I thought we might stop for lunch around Kingston (Exit 19) and hoped things would clear up by the time we got to Exit 17.

We got shunted off the Thruway at Exit 21! So I headed over to 9W and took that. There were streams to ford and fallen trees to avoid. It was a slow ride through depressed Newburgh but once through we made it to an obviously recently closed bridge now deemed unsafe. So much for 9W. I had to go back up to I84 and take that west to Goshen to pick up 17 East. It wasn't more than a few miles before we we shunted off that. I tried to follow 17M which parallels the main road but after a while we had to make a U'ey so it was back over to where we got off 17 with one chance to go south (on 94) before heading toward Port Jervis. I took this hoping to get to Warwick which I did. There there were three possible paths again. The first one was blocked after a couple of miles so I took another path down toward Greenwood Lake. The side of the lake my GPS directed me too was block so we had to retreat and go around the other way hoping to make it down to Route 23. We did this with only minor problems with zillions or trees lurking on either side of the road. Disaster at Route 23. I couldn't go south. So I went north (my only choice at the time, besides a U-turn) and after a while I couldn't go north and was forced to go south. (I think they just didn't want me to get to the traffic light where I would have headed south originally. I was sort of expecting trouble (flooding) in the Packanack Lake area and to have to detour onto I287 to get to I80 and I did. This would have been the end of my trouble, except my friend remembered that I287 was pretty close to JR Cigars so he suggested we go there for dinner and a smoke. I'm pretty good with all the roads in that area, but the closest I could get to JR was about a mile away and I was eventually forced to retreat to I80.

Normally the drive home from my hotel up near Saratoga is two and a half hours. Today it took about eight, and I think I was lucky to have made it back at all.

ML/NJ

[NVDave]

Ditto. We have 60+ MPH winds on almost no notice when thunderstorms pass within 50 miles of us at the right time in the evening. When the convective lift stops, the storms die and a huge rush of air comes down out of the anvil... and 10’s of miles away, it can cause very sharp increases in winds seemingly with no warning, no clue except the casement windows are getting ripped off the house.