If you live in NJ, there’s nothing moderate about this storm. It’s a huge flooding event, and record flood levels are likely along major rivers around the state, including the Raritan, Passaic, Ramapo, Millstone, and Saddle River/Brook. Some of those rivers wont even crest until midweek, and remain above flood stage until the end fo the week.

Was this storm a category killer? No.

It most certainly is a wakeup call for folks around here who haven’t experienced a hurricane in more than a decade. Storm prep did its job - reducing the amount of damage and loss of life. The very metric that he claims suggests hype (the body count) is also an indicator that the warnings and preparations by emergency services did their job.

Oh, and I’m sure if you live along the NY barrier islands, you’ve got a similar story, such as in Long Branch, where the ocean met the inshore bay during high tide.

August 2011 will also go down as the rainiest month ever at NYC Central Park.

But thankfully the storm surge fell in the low range for high tide, and Lower Manhattan wasn’t swamped. It was bad enough to rate the 6th highest level ever recorded.

A bullet was dodged, it could have been worse, and scientists will learn from the data collected here to adjust their models for East Coast storms to account for interactions between land and sea, coastal topography, front interactions, and future models will be improved as a result.

As it was, those models were pretty good at predicting a NYC area landfall and the storm surge (which put the surge at between 3-8 feet at the Battery, and it crested at around 4.5 feet). Where it fell short was on top sustained wind speeds, but which were more than sufficient to take down trees all over the region and cause widespread flooding.

So, to anyone trying to claim that the models are somehow dispositive on hype, try again. If you’re trying to claim the models disprove other models? Try again. The facts simply don’t support your claims.