Personally, Hurricane Sandy was probably one of the most fascinating and scariest weather events I have ever witnessed ( and I’ve seen waterspouts in person). I live pretty close to Stuyvesant Town and I can see the Con-Ed plant on 14th street from my window, so my area was caught in the blackout zone of lower Manhattan. During the storm itself, I remember watching the rain when I saw a weird blue/white light coming from the Cod-Ed plant that was steadily getting brighter. I pointed it out to my Dad, who said it was probably one of the transformers shorting out due to flooding and that the power would probably go out soon. Sure enough, there was a bright flash of light from the power plant as the transformer blew and about 30 seconds later all the power in downtown Manhattan went out. Since I live in a fairly large apartment building and they use electrical pumps to get the water to the higher floors, this also meant that we didn’t have running water. My parents decided that instead of waiting out the blackout at home, we would get a hotel room uptown.
I remember that walking around downtown Manhattan during the blackout was very surreal. Everything seemed unusually quiet south of about 30th street, but everything north of it (especially around the Times Square area) was as busy and active as usual. It was interesting being able to walk down the street and clearly seen the boundary point between the two electrical systems that supplied the city with its power. It was also very weird (at least to me) how quickly and effectively a storm of sufficient size (and flooding) would bring such as large portion of New York City to a grinding halt. It also drove home the point that, as storms get more intense with our changing climate, Sandy-sized storms would likely become more frequent and that the city would have to take measures to prevent such widespread blackouts and damages from occurring.
