Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

Yesterday morning a man knocked on our neighbor's door, then approached me and cattitude and started asking about our utility meters. When we said they were inside he said "they" would need access to the basement. We put him off, both because I was suspicious and because we were on our way out and wanted to be on the Bikeway, not in the basement. I was suspicious in part because the man was wearing a "Liberty Utilities" badge, and we get natural gas from National Grid and electricity from Eversource. There are at least two US companies called "Liberty Utilities," and one of them even serves a few places in Massachusetts, but not Arlington or any of the adjacent cities or towns.

When we talked about it later, I thought the man had been asking about the electricity, but Cattitude, who talked to him more than I did, said it was gas, so National Grid. I called them this morning, and they said they weren’t subcontracting with Liberty Utilities, and weren't doing any work in my neighborhood, or anywhere in Arlington.

I then called Liberty Utilities, who confirmed that they have nobody working in Arlington, since they don’t provide service here.

So: I have confirmed that this was some sort of scam, either to try to learn our billing information (so he could con us into switching providers), or to get into the building. I had asked the Arlington email list for information, so I posted my conclusions there.

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This evening, I looked at the National Hurricane Center's charts of current Atlantic and Eastern Pacific storms, and then followed a link on hurricane preparedness. Along with "make sure you have enough insurance" and suggestions of how much food and water to store, they advise looking up your hurricane evacuation zone.

It turns out that I live in zone B, and zone A (higher risk) starts on the other side of the street. It's a complicated map, which led us to speculating on the history of Mass Ave (the shape of the map, with a long strip where the land right at Mass Ave is not in an evacuation zone, but a block or two away is, strongly suggests that it's slightly higher ground). The risk here is clearly flooding from rainfall rather than storm surge: not just because we're inland a bit, but because of how closely the evacuation zones hug Spy Pond and parts of the Mystic Lakes.

According to NY1 news,

MTA officials say there won't be service for Monday morning, and that it's unlikely it will be back for the evening rush.

They say inspectors will have to check all tracks in the daylight to make sure everything is safe.

From context, this probably means subways, commuter rail, and the Staten Island Railroad; I'm guessing that at least some bus service will be running Monday morning.

There's nothing on the MTA website about this, but the newspaper websites were a couple of hours ahead of them on the announcement that they were planning to shut the system down.

I don't have anything urgent that requires me to get downtown (the desire to get to the gym twice next week doesn't qualify), and I expect the buses will be crowded. I don't much fancy standing on two buses for a total of an hour and a half. Hmmm. Maybe the express bus?

Dr. Jeff Masters, whose blog doesn't seem to have a "link to this specific entry" setup, is discussing possible causes of the recent increase in late-season Atlantic tropical storms. He's got some nice figures and tables, pointing out that "This increase in late-season tropical cyclone activity was not observed during the previous warm phase of theAtlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO)"--so it's probably not part of that natural cycle--and also that there's been no similar increase in late-season storms in the North Pacific, so if this is global warming, it's not a straightforward cause and effect. So, we continue to wonder and collect more data.

In the short term, "The chances of a tropical storm forming this week are probably around 20%." That's from an entry posted today, 10 January. It's not much comfort that, should the wind shear fail us and this extratropical low organize, it will be a 2006 storm named Alberto, not a 2005 Eta.

Here in New York City, we're having relatively mild, clear weather--the sort that might be called a January thaw were there snow and ice on the ground to be thawed. No connection, except in the sense that it's the same planet, and in fact the same hemisphere of that planet, and we may all be affected by the same butterflies, or Saharan dust storms, or sunspots.

I would just like to note that Tropical Depression Epsilon Public Advisory 37 begins "...EPSILON WEAKENING RAPIDLY...THIS IS THE LAST ADVISORY...
...IT IS ABOUT TIME..."

I got to that point and laughed out loud. Yes, I'm weird.

Note that they had predicted it would turn into a remnant low by last weekend.

The Atlantic tropical hurricane season is officially over, which means (among other things) that they aren't issuing tropical weather outlooks, but I assume they will tell us if zeta turns up out there.

In addition to not dissipating when predicted, Epsilon holds the dubious record of the longest December Atlantic hurricane on record; fortunately, it never came near land.

[I posted a subset of this to an open thread on Making Light]