Seawall: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/30/us/hurricane-sandy-churns-up-east-coast.html?hp&_r=0

(1) spray painted sign by some wiseacre taunting the hurricane; (2) guy in wetsuit with surfboard crossing beach toward Rocky Mountain sized breaking waves.

Here is Chris Christie with some aides, but it's video.

If you have to keep looking, avoid any pictures from Mike Bloomberg's press conference; it's all just shots of his crotch. Which MIGHT count as "waves breaking etc.", but.. no.

Not a press conference; does "briefing surrounded by aides" count?

How about Guy in 4WD truck, fighting water or maybe people posing for pics on the Brooklyn Bridge?

For a while I was contemplating a drinking game, but using the obvious terms — storm surge, millibars, NOAA, evacuation — would also render it unsurvivable.

What, you couldn't have used "batten down the hatches" still?

Crazy(and impertinent, so hanging her head in shame....)Soph

Item amusingly relocated to inappropriate place by wind

Michael, are those suggestions or broken links?

*Person in lawn/deck chair with beer and dramatic clouds in BG
*Someone wading through water carrying something over their head
*Treetops protruding from water
*Canoe/rowboat/kayak on Main Street
*House with masking tape/plywood on windows

How about:

1) Action shot of people sandbagging or installing plywood over windows.

2) Store shelves emptied of desirable items.

3) Police roadblocks closing dangerous routes.

(http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/29/us/tropical-weather-sandy/index.html contains examples of those first three, but I can't link to individual photos.)

4) Damaged sailboats (#2 here is a good start: http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/29/us/tropical-weather-sandy/index.html).

Hah - I just saw this one, under Teresa's "Dramatic Fake" category: storm surge

Floodwaters with partly-submerged car to visually illustrate depth.

Gnomed for a one-line link post.

Sub-category: Deserted Business/Financial District, taken just after sunrise on a Sunday morning.

How about idiots surfing? Oh, and flats of bottled water in the aftermath. (Hand-to-hand passing of supplies, too.)

Snopes.com is already collecting the dramatic fake shots, as is Buzzfeed.

On topic, but without the individual submissions: A Field Guide To Hurricane Photography: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/compound-eye/2012/10/29/a-field-guide-to-hurricane-photography/

Godzilla joke picture.

Saw it here, saw during the fukushima disaster.

https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/522879_10151127026525875_2084662015_n.jpg

Teresa
Any suggestions on how to classify the shirtless horsehead jogger?

Performance Art Pranksters?
Weather Jokers?
Hilarity Ensued?
15 Minute Famers?
A Sense of Humor In A Time of Trouble? (to quote a FEMA guy I once worked with*. Just be sure to say it with an Arkansawyer accent in a reverent, yet admiring, tone.)
Or we could just stick with a more pithy version: Humorists.

_____
* FEMA agents, apparently, have a soft spot for the people who sneak humor into the reports they have to read.

People sitting on rooftops

[You're having very bad luck with URL formats, Mary Dell. Have a ginger snap. Have two. — Idumea Cowper, Duty Gnome]

Dramatic shots of storm from space
Flooded downtown area (boats get bonus points)
Dramatic shots of gathering clouds/rain...through a window.

I've seen most if not all of these on facebook and twitter today, but I'm feeling too lazy to dig them out, so have at it.

Also:
meteorologists looking busy doing research
lolcat of Mitt Romney referencing his desire to dismantle FEMA
The dramatic locking of some usually busy but now empty venue.

Previous entry gnomed, probably because it's a link with no chit-chat.

For this comment I offer Flight status: cancelled.

Here are words to deter the gnomes.
My friends are battened in their homes.
It makes me want to write some poems.
Short ones only, though, not tomes.

Car flattened by fallen tree
http://www.bdlive.co.za/incoming/2012/10/29/hurricane-sandy-oct-29-20122/ALTERNATES/crop_638x402/Hurricane+Sandy+Oct+29+2012

Oh, suggestions?

Quiet suburban neighborhood, flooded deep enough that the doorknobs on front doors are covered.

Building shoved off of its foundation. Extra credit for a picture with the building over HERE, and the empty square of concrete over THERE.

"Looter" and "person finding supplies," from the same source.

Grocery cart full of bottled water.

The gnomes are undeterrable.

[We are. It's because you show us pictures of your son. We're suckers for a cutie. —Idumea Cowper, Duty Gnome]

There's a waves-breaking-over-the-seawall shot in the article about the Bounty which was linked by nerdycellist in the Open Thread. Scroll down to see it.

Haven't found an example yet, but surely there will be some examples of "reporter on beach/seawall struggling to stand up in the wind".

Is everyone aware that (mostly) Bay Area fan Doug Faunt was one of the crewmembers on Bounty 2.0? He's okay -- updated his status on Facebook with his last dying phone charge.

Here are two spray-painted signs:

Sandy or Treat

Gone Surfing, See You Monday (Well, it *is* a surf store.)

Yeah, heard about Doug. REALLY glad he's OK. Am praying for the two crewmembers yet to be found.

Here, have a plucky Post Office spraypainted sign, in verse yet, pledging to stay open.

Any sightings of sandbags piled against the storm surge showing up yet?

(Fingers crossed that they manage to sandbag the storm surge out of the subway. That sounds like a a horrific mess if they can't.)

storm-tossed waves

That was *low* tide today (Monday). For contrast, here's the same beach on Saturday.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/29/chip-reid-hurricane-sandy-cbs-news_n_2039038.html?ncid=txtlnkushpmg00000041

Reporter hit by massive wave

Just for you:

Shocking fake and tourists at unsafe location: Sandy Arrives In New York

Sandbags in front of the NYSE, along with empty subway stations

(I just googled sandbags wall street.)

Sandbags in the MTA

(as seen on the flickr blog)

photo gallery from TPM with multiple clichés:

Obama being briefed, car driving through flood, spray painted boarded-up buildings ("This Too Shall Pass"), kayakers, sandbags outside the NYSE, empty bread shelves.

One of the spray-painted signs is practical: "gas off".

Out-of-state TV reporter on his way to covering the storm, retweeted by newspaper:

AJC ‏@ajc
Watch--> RT @wsbtv: Just got pic from @DavidChandley. He's far enough north to find snow and he's live coming up at 5. http://twitpic.com/b8l4pv

Teresa @ #8: Sorry, just suggestions. I thought you were soliciting ideas for additional cliches.

Made me giggle: captioned pic of cops on beach

Did we get dramatic shot from space?

Here and here?

Links, I expect. Gnomes care for some leftover samosas? (The appetizer, not the cookie.)

From the historical division:

Half-submerged car in a flooded street
Evacuation notice
Bystander watching flooding
Sandbagging action shot
Goats in a rescue boat
Dramatically stranded person awaiting rescue
People carrying other people through the water
Officials and advisors looking serious
Mother and child being evacuated
Child and pet in shelter
Head of state touring disaster area

(All photographs from the Watersnoodramp of 1953)

Michael Weholt: Yes. You were right. I was soliciting suggestions, and you posted some good ones. I just wasn't sure which sort they were.

Is it cheating to link to a metapage of pics? (is such a metapage itself a cliche?) Building crane in Manhattan broke, and much more:
http://gizmodo.com/5955575/earth-photo-shows-sandys-massive-size
[Gizmodo]Latest Hurricane Sandy Satellite Photos and Videos (Updating Live)

I feel like I hit the motherlode.

while I'm making real hotlinks, here's this from my last post #40, Atlanta WSB-TV News Truck on the way to covering The Storm.

grabbing the few remaining bottles of water off of empty supermarket shelves

car in floodwater

boat crashing against the shore

filling sandbags

surfer facing high waves

Jim, #36: That looks like it was done in pastels. If so, it's an outstanding piece of artwork.

Another spraypainted sign taunting the storm.

I love the streakline map of the wind that tnh linked. I've liked that display method from when I first saw it, and that's an especially nice-looking version.

Is this the first urban shark pic? https://twitter.com/The_Real_Hmmm/status/263037153964077056/photo/1

No idea if real or repurposed.

#49 ::: Lee

I would bet a little bit on colored pencil, but it is a very nice piece of work.

I've been watching the Weather Channel all day. (I'm in the Boston EOC, so it's an occupational hazard; after eleven hours it's become vaguely soothing, in an obsessive kind of way.) The whole time I've been watching surprisingly hapful news anchors stay one foot ahead of the crashing waves, and morbidly wondering when one of them will get overtopped and swept away. They're very good at what they do, but it's got to be a hell of a life. So I nominate "news anchor walking into the storm to stay in place" and "news anchor ankle-deep in floodwater" for the cliché list.

There 24 hour news thing perversely incentivizes exactly the behavior -- going out into the storm -- that its anchors busily exhort its viewers not to engage in.

Lee and Nancy, it's clearly been arted up, but that could easily be based on a photo taken from Hoboken's waterfront, which has that kind of fence and that kind of angle on lower Manhattan.

Our weather disasters are much smaller and more unexpected than yours, but no British flood is complete without at least one picture of a plucky old lady being rescued. Bonus points if she is actually being carried in the arms of a hunky policeman and looking as if she is enjoying it.

Idiot, surfing (provenance questionable)

I suggest "people sleeping on luggage," "very nice house with large tree sticking out of it," and "shaky-cam footage of storm taken from inside home."

2 x 4's sticking out of hillside, tree-trunk or other steep surface like pins in a pincushion.

Further on Jenny Islander's #58, "people sleeping on cots or uncomfortable departure lounge seats at the airport".

And towards "dramatic fake shot": https://twitter.com/StuartS/status/263070722153406464

Jeff @58: I know someone who claimed to have spent all of Irene surfing. He said hurricanes were the only time the East Coast ever got good wave action, and I have no reason to doubt him.

Photo, graffiti saying "I don't believe in global warming", water level up to the crossbar of the A.

Imprudent tourists, and waves breaking over a sea wall. What's not to like?

This from WMUR.

People kayaking through their neighborhoods - in the streets.

They just showed it on the weather channel, we get the same thing when it floods here (as well as idiots driving AROUND the police barriers to go across flooded and possibly very dangerous roads that run alongside Brush Creek/the Blue River complex, where the roads are real near the water.)

"I heard the warnings but I had no idea the water would come up so fast!" (Someone being rescued from a precarious place....)

If I were told to evacuate, I would do so at the front of the warning, not after the water is coming in my door.

Another dramatic shot from space.

Okay, from the Australian disaster standbys (for extra Aussie points, all people involved should be clothed in summer-weight gear, because our disasters usually occur during the height of summer.)

* Tree fallen on garage/carport
* Kids playing puddle games in floodwater
* Someone mopping out their flooded house in thongs (flip-flops, to you Merkin types)
* Cars being swept away by floodwaters (video stream bonus)
* Wildlife stranded up trees/in suburbia
* Hail damage/photos of hailstones (bonus points where there's an indication of the size of same)
* 4WD vehicle with snorkel (head-height air intake) moving through floodwaters.

And of course, the special bonus from cyclone country: the before-and-after shots of the flooded river, where the before shot shows a river bed at least 5 storeys down from the roadbed, and the after shot shows same road bed approximately 2 - 3 inches from the top of the floodwaters.

Car in flooded street, Manhattan.

Over at Wunderground, there were a couple of good ones on Jeff Masters's blog: a shot of floodwaters coming into the Hoboken PATH station through an elevator shaft, and a video of a ConEd location exploding.

Both of those, when I saw them, were on pages 22-24 of the comments.

Canceled flights

Meteorologists looking busy doing research.

People sleeping on cots or uncomfortable departure lounge seats at the airport.

Megpie71, #67: Thongs* are absolutely what I would wear to push standing water out of a building in warm weather. They let the water out as easily as they let it in, and take no damage thereby.

* That's what I grew up calling them; I'm not sure when the shift to "flip-flops" occurred. Furthermore, these days it's difficult to find pretty shoes that aren't made thong-style, so I've taken to calling my rubber-soles-with-fabric-straps variety "surfer flops" to distinguish them from the gazillions of leather and vinyl ones at the shoe store.

Thongs as footwear:

My sense is that the word thong(s) started to lose its reference to footwear about the time the word started referring to the "booty floss" variety of underpants.

Here's the PATH station getting flooded.

ConEd's Eats River Gen Station (14th/Ave D) exploding. (video)

NYU hospital has apparently lost power and lost backup generator. Photo of ambulances staged to evacuate patients.

Underground parking garage, Manhattan.

Street in Brooklyn (corner of McGuinness Blvd and Huron St. A bit over 8 miles from Making Light Headquarters, "Home of the Gnome.")

Jim, the Con Gen link doesn't work.

ConEd video at Talking Points Memo.

CBS report on the explosion. Not too much there but confirmation.

Fixed the link. -- JDM

Water flooding past parked cars
Water flooding into the subway
Ground Zero
Woman doeng a cartwheel
Firemen hard at work
Partially collapsed building
Waves breaking/undaunted tourist

Alexis Madrigal of The Atlantic has taken on the task of identifying real v. fake Sandy photographs. She's calling the project InstaSnopes.

I'm seeing mostly pictures of New York with the occasional New Jersey here. Pennsy is notable by its absence, so..

Press conference with the Mayor of Philadelphia (video).

I'll see how many other squares I can cover, but right now I need to go bed.

#74/77: There are two separate explosions in that video. The first one is about 20 seconds in, the second (larger) one at 3:00 in the same location. Must have been a multi-stage process.

I couldn't tell if it was the same explosion, twice, or two - there was a gap between the two, like someone had gone back and started a recording from an earlier point.

It was very impressive, though.

In the "press conference" category, my brother posted:

"Based on what people are saying online, the clear breakout star of this storm is Mayor Bloomberg's sign language interpreter. I'm sure there are already GIFs being animated."

One of his friends confirmed that there is now a http://signlanguagelady.tumblr.com/.

tree down on fancy house

and

tree down on slightly less fancy house

Special DC bonus score: photo of "The Awakening" drowned" (at left)

I think this actually might not be a cliché, unless it's an example of incongruous objects: boat sitting on commuter rail tracks.

Boat in inappropriate place:

http://screencast.com/t/zvJOcELV4s1

and if this is gnomed, I have banana bread available for soothing

Not cliche hurricane photos: these look more like Colorado than Queens.

Not cliche, and on a lighter note: New Yorkers cluster around a closed Starbucks. Why? Working wifi.

Downed tree on house in
Media, PA

This video gets several entries at once: Flood (no partly submerged car for scale, but later there's a couple of knocked over newspaper courtesy boxes), downed tree on house (extra points for fallen branch on car), power company at work, fire department at work, and abandoned business.

I'm not sure if downed tree on power lines qualifies as a cliche, but this one's pretty impressive.

This might qualify as an object amusingly repositioned by the wind.

*sigh* Even the Philly news sources seem to mostly have pictures of places in New Jersey.

I had been going to stick to Pennsylvania images, but the closest thing we have to a coast is the Delaware River tidal zone and that just doesn't make for the kind of dramatic waves over barriers that ocean does, and this one is pretty impressive.

A rather nice photo of the Empire State Building with its lights on in the blackout. Not a cliche, but pretty.

In praise of cliches: The birdsong this morning sounded *wonderful*.

People surfing on the waves from the storm. Which Mary Aileen @48 claimed already, but this isn't on the ocean -- it's on Lake Michigan.

Brooks Moses (94): Holy mackerel!

Mary Aileen @95: After posting that, I asked my local-to-Chicago coworker (from whom I got that link) how uncommon this is, and he says those sorts of waves happen about once a year although this is a bit longer-duration than usual.

He also made comments about not-from-around-there people tending to seriously underestimate weather on the lakes, which seems pretty apt to me!

Here's another in the inappropriately placed object category, although this one looks rather more chilling than amusing to me, this morning.

Flood waters up to the wheelhubs on a jetbridge at LaGuardia, from JetBlue's blog. That's not equipment you want seawater getting into....

Favorite line in the comments section, reanswering one of the FAQs: "'The storm has passed, why can’t you fly?' Because the FAA won't let us bolt pontoons to bottoms of our planes."

Apparently the gnomes do not like links to JetBlue's blog.

Via Ginger on Facebook, at least a third of this series of 47 photos are Bingo shots. The rest are just impressive.

@Mary Aileen no. 100: Did you catch the "Caution, Wet Floor" sign somebody placed in a jetsam-covered intersection in photo no. 27?

Heh.

A tip for the next one: Apparently somebody successfully defended his home from flooding (due to a river breaching a levee, so high winds were not involved--caveat lector) by caulking everything on the ground floor tightly shut. The expense of removing the caulking afterward and repairing the damages caused by removing the caulking were much, much lower than the potential expense of floodwater inside the house. I can't go find the photos ATM because I caught a DNS redirect virus YET AGAIN and have to block out the time to remove the frickin' thing.

In this morning's Metro (free paper given out in train stations) in London, the folllowing offerings:

"Residents use a boat to wade through a street in Queens.
"Times Square: A solitary man walks through the deserted landmark"
"Destroyed: Breezy Point in the borough of Queens was flooded then fire struck"
"Write offs: Cars float in a flooded basement in the financial district"

Also a piece on Claudene Christian and the captain of the Bounty, Robin Walbridge, and an accompanying picture of the Bounty with waves breaking over it.

Jenny Islander @ 101: Ha! If I can find that caulk story I'll have to send it to my mother-in-law. She believes in caulk. When she was helping us replace some pieces of damaged siding and repaint our house, she even taught us to spackle the nail holes, not with spackle, but with a smear of caulk. I have no doubt that faced with a flood, she would supplement sandbags with large quantities of caulk.

In other news, I think this photo of a flooded parking lot full of yellow cabs is an extreme version of the photo cliché I submitted earlier.

This MTA video of "Hugh L. Carey/Brooklyn Battery Tunnel Damage" has about 5-10 seconds of dudes in official jackets talking concernedly about something in the distance.

An MTA video of South Ferry and Whitehall St Station Damage includes not treetops, but the tops of subway escalators and stairways protruding from water.

Brooks Moses @96: Yeah, Chicago surfing is a thing. (They've reportedly worked out a deal with the police as to which beaches are surfing-appropriate; the surfers used to get busted a lot.)

The experienced Chicago area surfers were telling most people not to go out Tuesday, because it was just too rough. More info and links here.

Big, big storm system, to affect the east coast and the north coast at the same time....

Not the biggest in recent memory, though -- I can recall seeing satellite photos of Katrina basically filling up the entire Gulf of Mexico. I don't have rigorous measurements, but looking at a map it seems to me that that's a larger distance than NY-to-Chicago. I could be wrong, of course.

106
North Carolina to Ohio and Nova Scotia (at least), all at the same time, is bigger than Katrina, I think.

Article from The Atlantic about trying to counter the flood of fake Sandy pictures

I'm waiting for one of those reporter-on-storm-scene shots to end with the reporter being hit by a larger-than-usual wave or a piece of flying debris.

P J Evans #109: It's already happened, in this latest storm. I'll see if I can find the footage.

Here you are:

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/hurricane-sandy-reporter-producer-hit-storm-wave-17589749

also:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/post/hurricane-sandys-rogue-wave-attacks-cbs-reporter/2012/10/29/f920783e-21d4-11e2-ac85-e669876c6a24_blog.html

For whatever it might be worth, Wunderground is saying there's a nor'easter on the way; NJ is going to be hit again, so I assume NYC and Long Island are also targeted.