|
|
|
storm surges along the Hudson
Wednesday, October 31 2012
I attempted to crank my way through my latest painting, a 30 by 24 inch reimagining of a photo taken back in June at the abandoned hotel, but art is not something one can crank one's way through. The deadline, which was somewhat soft, was a planned meeting with Deborah down at KMOCA with all the art from my show. But then it turned out that I could bring the painting in on Friday, and so all the pressure to crank out the painting collapsed.
I drove into Kingston in the mid-afternoon, entering the Rondout from the south on Abeel, which took me along the lower part of Rondout Creek (the part of Kingston you see in Marwencol). After seeing that Route 213 south of its intersection with Abeel had been closed off (was the bridge out?), I wondered if the sea surge from Hurricane Sandy had managed to travel all the way up to Kingston and then up Rondout Creek (which is at sea level to just above the Route 213 bridge). I didn't see much or any signs of devastation among the docks and piers of the lower Rondout, but I did notice a fair number of boats appeared to be unusually far from the water's edge. So when I met Deborah and asked her, she said that indeed there had been flooding along Rondout Creek and that the flood where the Esopus dumps into the Hudson at Saugerties had been twenty inches higher than the Irene-spawned flood that had driven her from her old house there two houses ago. Oddly, though, there had been almost no rain associated with the Sandy this far inland, so the water must have been entirely oceanic. Lacking water depth with which to propagate, tsunamis cannot travel so far up the Hudson, but evidently storm surges can.
I didn't stay at the gallery long, helping Deborah finger-spackle over the holes in the drywall from the last show and then driving to Uptown to get a few hardware supplies from Herzog's.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?121031 feedback
previous | next |
