Hurricane Sandy - the calm before the storm

Hours before Hurricane Sandy, feared to be the biggest storm to hit America in remembered history, whirled into the east coast of the United States days before the Halloween holiday, Americans got into a strange kind of holiday mood. The expression "calm before the storm" has perhaps never been better articulated. Surfboards and sailboards came out on the ocean, milking the heavy winds and high waves for all the action they could offer before the going got really rough. Fishermen rolled in their last catch. Some cautiously sandbagged their yards and boarded up windows to escape the wrath of the tropical storm. Others just went for long walks on the windswept piers, while kids played on the sand barriers piled up on the beaches to push back the rising seas.

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