Last night, the New York Office of Emergency Management, along with the National Weather Service offices in Albany and Binghamton, issued a highwind warning and a floodwatch for the next 48 hours for all five counties in the Catskills region.
Arthur R. Snyder, the director of Ulster County Emergency Communication, sent us a concise explanation of what those warnings mean: Read more
Governor Andrew Cuomo just announced that he has mobilized 1,175 members of the National Guard to stand by at posts across the state to prepare for Hurricane Sandy. For the Catskills region, the deployment includes 200 soliders who will go on duty at armories in Binghamton, Walton and Horseheads tomorrow. Additional troops and supplies will be standing by at the Camp Smith Training Site north of Peekskill.
The mobilization is part of a statewide effort that includes soldiers in New York City and on Long Island. Here's the full press release with info:
Up to 1,175 Troops Will Respond in NYC, Long Island, Hudson Valley, Southern Tier Read more
Rich Muellerleile, captain of the Shandaken Ambulance Service (and author of the Watershed Post's safety column, Stayin' Alive), has a message for Catskills residents: If you need medication, make sure you have at least a week's supply on hand now.
"If you have meds that you're going to need to order, put the order in now," he said.
Shandaken first responders were able to get essential medications to stranded people with ATVs during Irene, but the effort taxed the department to its limits, Muellerleile said. Read more
Governor Andrew Cuomo just declared a state of emergency in New York as the region braces for the impact of Hurricane Sandy early next week. The move allows Cuomo to coordinate the emergency response effort.
In a long press release from Cuomo's office about storm preparations, some details about the Catskills stand out. The New York Power Authority has lowered its water level at its Blenheim-Gilboa reservoir to its minimum depth in an attempt to control flooding downstream. And the New York City Department of Environmental Protection and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation are working together to coodinate an emergency drawdown of the Schoharie Reservoir and the Ashokan Reservoir in an attempt to ease pressure on the Gilboa Dam in Schoharie County.
Here's the info from Cuomo's press release: Read more
The forecast for Hurricane Sandy is still uncertain, but here at Watershed Post HQ we're preparing for the worst: A storm that dumps as much rain on us as Tropical Storm Irene did just over a year ago. Rainfall like that, coupled with the healthy levels of water in our streams and reservoirs already, could cause serious flooding.
We'll be providing live coverage of the storm all weekend and next week on our Hurricane Sandy page. (You can stay posted on our Facebook page and our Twitter feed, too.) We'll be using a special hashtag for the Catskills: #SandyCatskills. You can also check for town-by-town Sandy updates on our town pages. Click on "Towns" in our site menu above and then select your county and then town.
Here are some ways you can help us prepare for the storm:
Send us your contact info - email, Facebook name, cell phone number, and landline numbers. One of the biggest problems of Tropical Storms Irene and Lee was communication: For many towns and counties, we simply couldn't get through to anyone who could tell us what was going on. So this year, we're trying to change that by building a list of reliable sources in every town and county in the Catskills ahead of time. This is where you come in. If you will be in the Catskills next week and are willing to have us contact you to get information about storm conditions in your area, please send your contact info to editor@watershedpost.com, tweet it to @watershedpost, Facebook it to us at www.facebook.com/watershedpost, or call it in to us at 845-481-0115.
Urge your local officials to talk to us. It's hard for us to get through to the powers that be in many places. (We're getting the brush-off from some officials as we call today.) Urge your local town or county official take our calls or, even better, to call us and use us to get the word out when the storm hits. The more they reach out, the more gets known, faster.
Volunteer to be a liveblog moderator. We will be launching a live blog to follow the storm, and we'll need volunteers to moderate comments to the blog and provide information in 2-hour shifts throughout the week. The shifts will be 7am to 9am, 9am to 11am, 11am to 1pm, 1pm to 3pm, 3pm to 5pm, and 5pm to 7pm. Name a day and time that works for you. (To see how the live blog worked last time around, click here.)
We will be working with a team of journalism students at SUNY New Paltz (and with their fearless leader, Adam Bosch) to make calls around the region on Monday night. All next week, if the storm hits, we'll need all hands on deck. Stay safe, and keep us posted.
Hurricane Sandy is getting a lot of media attention based on similarities to "the perfect storm" and other significant late season events. It is still very early to accurately project the timing, track and possible impacts. However, at this early stage, here is a compilation of information from the National Weather Service offices in Binghamton and Albany, as well as the National Hurricane Center. Read more
As our local weather gets stranger and stranger, I think that more people are becoming aware how dependent we are on the natural world. We need politicians who understand the necessity to protect our farmland and other open space, who vehemently oppose fracking because of the water and air pollution observed in other states where fracking is now being done, who want to help us sever our dangerous and ever more expensive dependence on fossil fuels, who see the jobs available for local people from installing solar panels and wind turbines.
The Sierra Club, founded in 1892, is the nation's oldest and largest environmental organization with approximately 45,000 members in New York State alone; its Mid-Hudson Group has over 1,900 members. Julian Schreibman has been endorsed for the new 19th Congressional district seat and Kirsten Gillibrand has been endorsed for a full term as federal Senator. Read more
While executing a search warrant at a house at 349 Bandcamp Road on Thursday, Saugerties police stumbled across a "sophisticated" indoor growing operation for pot and hallucinogenic mushrooms. Two people have been arrested on felony drug charges: 24-year-old Cara L. Kelly of Syracuse and 36-year-old Nicholas James Langella, a resident of the Bandcamp Road house.
Online photos: Understanding copyright and finding photos to use for free
There are multiple ways to find fantastic photos online to use for free. You just have to know where to look, and how to take advantage of new open-source copyright licenses.
At the end of the session, you will be able to: Read more
![[Image of 5-day forecast and coastal areas under a warning or a watch]](http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/storm_graphics/AT18/refresh/AL1812W5_NL_sm2+gif/144711W5_NL_sm.gif)
