A BLOG FROM MY HUB

What does a hurricane sound like? As our screens fill with images of the total devastation caused by Sandy, I thought you might like to know something of how I perceived its power. As my colleague and I set out for our meeting on Monday morning, it seemed incredible to us that the meteorologists were warning of the perfect storm. Yes it was raining just a little and maybe the odd gust of wind made us think of a typically English weather day, but nothing to untoward seemed to be in the offing… As an aside, do you know it was the British Met office which first forecast the conditions which created Sandy, issuing a warning of its turn in to the US east coast 8 days before the storm struck. Our meeting finished early as the building was being closed. For those technically minded and with a visual impairment who are reading this, imagine my frustration, as this building houses everything and anything ever developed in the world of access technology and I had no time to play with it. As we exited the building, it was clear that the weather had dramatically changed in just 2 hours. Driving back, it sounded as though someone was randomly spraying the car with a powerful hose, or pelting it with fine sand, such was the gusty nature of the wind which seemed to hurl driving rain at us. Time to "hunker down" in the hotel old bean …but my colleague had other ideas and set off to find provisions in case the storm got much worse. Being a kind of frontier guy, he returned unperturbed, saying it seemed like a mildly wild day to him. I worked through the afternoon under a relatively sound-proof head set, enfolding me in to a world of email, spreadsheets, documents and web pages - I know how to live it up. Only when I lost internet connection did I surface to be surprised by what seemed to be a pin ball machine, but which was actually the wind hurling huge rain drops at the 2 sets of windows in my corner room. Oh, a corner room, I realised, subject to the changing elements that can often be found in a hurricane. Having established a connection again, I retreated to the headset. At about 5PM, I made the mistake of turning on the television to reports of dire disaster from frankinstorm. Now I am very sorry for all those reading this in the USA who are afflicted by US television, but the reporting of the storm was most strange. The cameras kept returning to a 40 tonne crane hanging over the streets of New York, a tiny microcosm of what was actually going on at the time, or focus on a reporter who was trying to explain things in the teeth of a gale so you could hear absolutely nothing. This still felt like a strong English storm to me, although the volume of rain, by now more than 7 inches, was frightening. But this changed at around 6PM, just as the storm neared land. We are used to gusty winds in the UK, sometimes close to 100 miles per hour, but, at this time, the wind changed to a constant pushing sensation which seemed to change the air pressure in my room. You couldn't so much hear it as feel it. I am a naturally stupid person, so I unlocked the window and opened it just an inch to experience what was going on. Thanks to my lovely wife's cooking, I am of substantive build, and it took all of that bulk to force the window closed again, such was the force of this constant blast of air with its smell of the sea, destruction and fear. In that brief moment, I experienced a sheet of water, not rain, forced against the window. So much entered the room that a hotel towel was needed. My ears could feel the pressure as the wind slowly switched around the corner of the hotel, and then back again, before turning through 90 degrees to push on the other corner window. I feared that the windows would be pushed out and would lose their battle with the wind which seemed to scream torture at the corner of the hotel. I later realised that the battle was lost on the 38th floor of the hotel as some windows were pushed in. One can only imagine the forces experienced by buildings often more than 1000 feet high where wind speeds at such elevations are as much as 30% more than at ground level. 2 hours later, the usual gusty motion of a storm returned. I was miles from land fall and can only imagine the fear and inevitability felt by so many people who have now lost so much in what will be one of the most costly natural disasters ever to hit the USA.