Westchester County, as well as the Northeast, is suffering from the hangover of Hurricane Sandy.

We hope that those whom are without power (and there are many!) will soon have the power turned back on.  In the meantime, this is when friends, and neighbors come together.  Volunteers, and civil servants are doing all they can to help speed along the recovery process.  The reality is that in some cases it may be weeks before power comes back to some homes.  Hopefully patience will be in abundance.

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An obvious statement: natural disasters are just that...natural. 

There is nothing new about devastating hurricanes.  They happen all the time. 

Did you know about the Long Island Express Hurricane of 1938?:

The hurricane was estimated to have killed between 682 and 800 people, damaged or destroyed over 57,000 homes, and caused property losses estimated at US$306 million ($4.7 Billion in 2012). Even as late as 1951,damaged trees and buildings were still seen in the affected areas.

Or have you heard of the "Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635"?:

It would likely have been a Category 4 or 5 hurricane further south in the Atlantic, and it was at least a strong Category 3 hurricane at landfall with 125 mph (201 km/h) sustained winds and a central pressure of 938 mbar (27.7 inHg) at the Long Island landfall and 939 mbar (27.7 inHg) at the mainland landfall. This would be the most intense known hurricane landfall north of North Carolina. Jarvinen noted that the GCH may have caused the highest storm surge along the east coast of the U.S. in recorded history: 20 feet (6.1 m) near the head of Narragansett Bay. He concluded that "this was probably the most intense hurricane in New England history."

An erosional scarp in the western Gulf of Maine may be a trace of the Great Colonial Hurricane.

In between there were two notables: Hurricane of 1821 and the Hurricane of 1893.

All told there have been at least 84 tropical storms/hurricanes to hit the New York area since the 17th century.  Who knows how many came to this area before we began to track hurricanes?

The Westchester YR's are hoping that all of you are safe and sound.  Our civil servants are working around the clock to get fallen trees off of the roads, restore power, and get Westchester back up and moving again.

Here is an update from CBS, New York:

For those north of New York City, life is still not normal since superstorm Sandy hit on Monday.

Utility crews in the Hudson Valley continue their efforts to restore electricity service to the tens of thousands of customers still without power in the aftermath of the storm.

Most of the outages in Mid-Hudson Valley are in Dutchess, Orange and Ulster counties, where more than 100,000 customers remain without power Wednesday morning. Sullivan County in southeast New York has another 32,000 outages...

Today is not the day to be a hero.  Stay home if you have no where urgent to be.  Ride out the storm in the safety of your own home, until the worst passes through. 

Here is more from the Mount Pleasant Daily Voice: