The Worst Hurricanes In New England History

We've had sort of a slow summer for hurricanes. It's not like New England gets them very often, and we certainly are not a hotspot... but we at least get Threatened with one now and then. This summer? Nada.

There are good, valid, known reasons for this as-it-stands-now lack of tropical action. For one, we have seen tons of Sahara Desert dust being blown offshore. They've had a dry summer over there, and the Sahara dust interferes with water heating and surface-to-air evaporation... both of which are crucial to hurricane formation

We've also had a gorgeous summer. We get these summers because a big area of high pressure sets up near us. High pressure circulates clockwise. Low pressure circulates counter-clockwise. When they meet, the low pressure system gets sheared. When that happens, it's pretty much all she wrote for Tropical Storm Whoever.

So, to summarize, you've had a dry summer in Africa, and any tropical waves which come off the Dark Continent that aren't smothered by dust are then stopped by shear. Hence, the lack of hurricane reporting going on in these parts.

Conditions do not look favorable for development in the eastern Atlantic in the upcoming week, but things could yet pick up. However, we are not here today to talk about the future... we're here to talk about the past.

New England, despite not being Florida or Louisiana, does have an impressive hurricane history. We've been hit by some doozies. Cape Cod, which is sort of the chin of New England, usually bears the brunt of our hurricanes, although the body shot that is a Connecticut landfall also has an impressive history.

Since we're a Cape Cod news site, we'll use Cape impact as the deal-breaker when assembling this list of storms. We'll use impact on population as well, so many pre-Columbian monster storms will miss the list despite their power still being apparent 1000 years after the fact.

This history is also mis-calibrated into post-1620 bias due to the writes-down-their-history style of the Paleface. I'm sure that the Eastern Woodlands people had seen plenty of Biggies by the time that the Mayflower arrived. Either way, everything before 1635 gets to share one paragraph.

Conversely, many storms which are merely overgrown nor'easters will appear on this list solely because Cape Cod had more people living there when ranked Tropical Storm Irene hit in 2011 than when the similar but unranked 1683 tropical storm arrived and disturbed 1200 Pilgrims.

So, let's review some history, and set a benchmark for historic storms. If I have to re-write this list soon, you'll most likely have lost your roof.

We'll go by date, rather than ranking. If I skip your favorite storm, I guess it just wasn't a True Player.

Pre-Pilgrim

Recent innovations allow researchers to guess when big storms hit before recorded history.

I've seen them doing it at the Great Salt Marsh in Duxbury. They drill for soil samples, get a ten foot tube full of soil, then analyze layers of mud to see when some sand unexpectedly appears over marsh mud. This sand could only be put there by a storm big enough to wash beach sand over the dunes and into the marsh. Once they find sand, they do some Science/Math stuff (it is unbecoming to the sportswriter, all this Book Learning that you speak of...), and can determine when big hurricanes struck the area.

Therefore, we know that major storms hit the region in roughly 1100 AD, 1300 AD, and 1450 AD. Given the fact that recorded history shows dozens of hurricanes each century, we can assume that these storms really stood out, and were probably Katrina-style events.

I'm not sure if the soil method is valid for pre-Ice Age storms, but it is handy for any time post-Jesus... and, to be fair, if your hurricane research really needs to pre-date the Big Man, this column is probably several PhD's beneath you. I'm generally the Sports Editor here.

The Great Colonial Hurricane

1635 was a good year to be a Pilgrim, but August 25th of 1635 was a very bad day to be one. On this day, with absolutely no warning at all, what scientists say was a Category 3 hurricane dropped out of the skies onto the early Pilgrims and their Wampanoag friends.

Scientists and historians can actually piece together a pretty good idea of what this storm was like by primary source documents and computer storm surge models. These things speak of a 15 foot storm surge, a mile-wide swath of trees blown down, dozens of drowned Wampanoags, 125 mph winds and a reading of 27.7 inches on John Alden's barometer.

It was "the most intense hurricane in New England history" and would have done "a bazillion" dollars damage in 2013 dollars on 2013 Massachusetts. The first quote is from Brian Jarvenin, a National Hurricane Center expert and a noted authority in the field, and the latter one is from Stephen Bowden, about whom such things are not said.

A few funny things to ponder with this storm...

- The Pilgrims left Europe- where storms like this don't happen- in 1620. It is fairly safe to say that they saw a few nor'easters before 1635, but nothing like the GCH. I grew up in northern France, with a similar climate to the Dutch/English one they were used to... this storm must have seemed like the wrath of God.

One of my neighbors on Duxbury Beach had a nanny from the Gold Coast of Australia, where they also don't get things like hurricanes and blizzards. She was home alone when the April Fool's blizzard struck Massachusetts, and she was in a panic when I spoke to her on the phone.

It was a very English sort of panic, though... "When do the send the Army for us? And who makes all of this snow go away?"

- Duxbury was founded in 1637, by Myles Standish. Where he settled would be very much uphill from the Plymouth colony. Duxbury also has a very effective barrier beach. I never really put together the 1637 founding date with the 1635 hurricane. Myles probably lost his house in the GCH, and rebuilt on higher ground.

It's a shame that I found this out, because I liked the previous idea I held on Duxbury's founding... that Duxbury, which- depending on how you view Weymouth and Bourne- was America's first suburb, was founded by a guy for whom 1637 Plymouth had gotten just a little bit too crowded.... to the point where he decided to hack his own town out of the forest.

- If the Pilgrims had a National Hurricane Center and named each hurricane, this would have been named something like "Mercy" or "Prudence" or "Goody." "Headeth for yonder hills, 'ere cometh Hurricane Faith."

1778 Hurricane Season

Two storms of note struck Cape Cod during this Summer Of War.

The first storm hit in August as a weakening hurricane, and is notable only for cancelling a Revolutionary War naval battle between France and England off Rhode Island. Had the British won that battle, it would have only been a short march and a bit of shooting before they conquered Cape Cod.

Since, before the Canal, there was only one way to Boston from the southern colonies, British possession of Cape Cod would have essentially taken Boston out of the war effort. With the British holding both New York and Canada as well, it would have taken New England out of the war... and we'd probably be Old England still.

Another storm- possibly a nor'easter, possibly not- struck on November 1st. This direct-hit Cape Cod, and killed 70 people. 23 of those dead were British sailors from the HMS Somerset III, which ran aground off Cape Cod. This is generally known as the 1778 New England Hurricane.

October 17th, 1782

This mild one is listed only because it was a rare Snow Hurricane, although it probably rained on Cape Cod. We'd have been too close to the warm creamy center for any snow.

"Snow hurricane" makes me think "nor'easter," as a hurricane is more of a heat engine. Hurricanes draw their energy from warm ocean waters, while nor'easters draw theirs from areas of contrasting temperatures.

New England isn't that big, and if it's cold enough to snow in one part while warm enough for a hurricane-strength ocean storm not too far away, that sounds like contrasting temperatures.

Either way... Snow Hurricanes make the list, even if they were nor'easters.

The Storm of October 1804

This monster was/is also known as The New England Hurricane of 1804.

This was the second Snow Hurricane on the list, but it was definitely not a nor'easter. It left a path of destruction from Virginia (descrbed in one ship's log as "a dreadful squall") up to here. Experts estimate it as a Category 3, which is Bob-sized. Top winds were 115 mph.

It dropped 3 feet of snow on Massachusetts, and was the first Snow Hurricane to gain national attention.

Cape Cod most definitely got rain from this. Salem, much further than the Cape from the storm's warm center, is recorded as getting 7 inches of rain.

If you knew that a storm blew the steeple off the Old North Church in Boston, now you know which one did it.... the New England Hurricane of 1804.

The Great September Gale of 1815

This storm was the worst to hit New England since that Pilgrim Hurricane 180 years before.

This is considered to be one of the 5 worst hurricanes to hit New England. Winds reached 135 mph, and Providence had a 17 foot storm surge.

The October Gale of 1841

This one, which actually passed off-Cape enough that it snowed in Connecticut, exacted a high cost on the coast.

81 fishermen were lost, as the storm wrecked the Georges Bank fishing fleet. It is also notable for destroying salt works on Cape Cod... an event which led to a profound economic slump for the region. Cape Cod was highly dependent on salt, and, when the British attacked Wareham during the War of 1812, the first thing they set on fire was Wareham's salt works.

Note that the word "hurricane" had not entered into common American English at the time (it's either a Carib word Juaracan, who is their storm god... or it's the Mayan creator god, Huracan), hence the use of the word "Gale" so often.

October, 1849

A late season storm hits Massachusetts, killing 143 people. It is the second deadliest hurricane to ever hit New England.

The Saxby Gale

This storm hit in October 1869, and was the last notable storm for some time. It even got a folk song written about it.

It was a category 2 storm, and- amazingly- wasn't even the biggest storm of the year. The eerie name actually comes from a naval instructor who weather-geeked an accurate storm forecast of some sort, years ahead of radar.

A category 3 storm struck SE Massachusetts in September 1869. This, and the cooler-named Saxby Gale, would have killed more people if SE Massachusetts at the time wasn't a series of small, far-apart farms.

After those hit, we enter into a down period. We still get storms, and some even come ashore as hurricanes (several in 1870s, 80s, and 90s) but nothing really makes big news for 50 years.

Even then, we only get a pair of storms that hammer Buzzards Bay in 1904 and 1916. Then, things get hectic.

August 1924

This was a category 2 or 3 storm, and the worst thing to hit Massachusetts since the Saxby Gale. It cut a line from New Bedford to Plymouth, through sparsely-populated areas.

The old-timers will tell you that damage from this storm to the Cape and Islands was worse than the damage inflicted in 1938. It was followed by another hurricane which killed an impressive 84 Vermonters in 1927.

Storms really do need names, because if this were Hurricane Vito or something, you'd have heard of it.

The Long Island Express

This is the biggest of them all. The 1635 hurricane was more intense, but it struck probably 400 people. This storm struck during September of 1938.

It started near the Cape Verde Islands, gained strength, and slammed into Long Island with 125 mph winds. SE Massachusetts, on the deadly northeast side of the storm, suffered terrific damage. If you ever hear about Blue Hills getting a hurricane-record 186 mph wind gust (and probably worse, as a different, stronger gust broke their anemometer), that was from this storm.

This storm owns the deaths record, at 600-800. The storm hit Cape Cod with 18-25 foot tides. Falmouth and Bourne were under 8 feet of water. New Bedford lost about 70% of their fishing fleet. The fire station in Buzzards Bay was under 5 feet of water, and that's inland a fair bit.

One old-timer I know said that he saw a house wash down the Canal and finally get caught up on the Bourne Bridge. When they got out to it, it was full of water. Inside, they found a mother and her two daughters... dead. They also found the body of a guy who swam out to try to rescue them. All of them perished while trying to claw through the roof of the rapidly-flooding house with their bare hands.

Between the Saxby Gale and this storm, the USA had gained many immigrants from Europe. These people, like the Pilgrims who I mentioned earlier, had no idea how storms get. Only the oldest of old-timers remembered the Saxby Gale, and the 1924 storm wasn't all over the Internet or anything, seeing as Al Gore hadn't invented it yet.

Throw in some piddle-poor forecasting (a rookie at the National Weather Forecast center actually called the storm and the New England landfall, but was overruled by his superiors, who issued gale warnings and mentioned nothing at all of a killer hurricane flying up at New England), and people died by the bushel-friggin'-basket.

Damages were around $5 billion in 2013 money. 35% of New England's trees died. 25000 cars, 50000 homes, and 25000 telephone/electric poles were destroyed by the storm. Power was out for 2 weeks after the storm, and it was out for months in isolated places.

Things stayed active after this storm, which was also known as the Great New England Hurricane.

The Great Atlantic Hurricane

1944 was a bad year to be at sea. If some U-Boat didn't kill you, the Great Atlantic Hurricane would.

This storm was a monster, in both size and intensity. As such, it was given that name in the title by the NHC (then the Miami Hurricane Warning Office). Thusly, it was the first storm to get a name.

Peaking at 145 mph, it came ashore in Long Island and Rhode Island as a category 2 storm. It is famous in these parts for sinking the lightship LV Vineyard Sound, killing all 12 men on board.

Hurricane Carol

This is the 1954 Carol, not the 1953 Carol. If a named storm wasn't too bad, they kept the old name in circulation, so you'd get 2 or 3 Carols in a row if they all stayed out at sea. This one didn't.

Carol made landfall in Saybrook, CT as a category 3 storm. This makes Carol one of the Big 5... storms which were Category 3 or greater upon their New England landfall. The others were 1635, 1815, 1938, and and either, depending on which stats you believe, 1869 or Hurricane Bob.

Carol was the first storm where Cape Cod was evacuated, with 20,000 people bugging out. 1500 Wareham residents were left homeless, and a 20 foot storm tide inundated New Bedford. 65 people died, and about 1000 were injured. 1/3 of all New England lost power.

2 weeks later, Hurricane Edna arrived, doing even more damage. Edna passed right over Cape Cod as a Category 2, and killed 28 people.

After the 1938 storm and the Great Atlantic Hurricane, you started seeing seawalls go up along the Massachusetts shoreline. The seawall in front of my house in Duxbury has "Tony, 7/54" carved into it. They got the wall up just in time, although I don't know how much good it did.

This was also the storm which made them try dumping silver iodide into hurricanes to cool and kill them, something called Project Stormfury.

Carol was the first Atlantic hurricane name to be retired.

Hurricane Donna

This 1960 storm put a 140 mph wind gust onto Blue Hills, a 135 mph gust on Block Island, and a partially shaded 110 mph gust at New Bedford airport. Donna, a Cape Verdean storm, reached a peak of 160 mph while moving across the Atlantic towards us.

This was sort of the Storm before the Calm, as about 25-30 years passed before another major hurricane hammered Cape Cod. Gloria skimmed us in the 1980s, Belle drew a lot of attention in 1976, and Carrie put 90 mph winds on Plymouth in 1972, but Cape Cod was essentially off the hook until 1990.

Hurricane Bob

This gale is the benchmark that modern Cape Codders use when referencing storms. Bob whupped up on Cape Cod like we owed him money and were talking about his mother concurrently. Bob came in August, 1991.

The head of Buzzards Bay (Onset, Buzzards Bay, Cataumet, etc...) bore the brunt of this storm. Most of these areas were under 5-10 feet of water. The Massachusetts Maritime Academyy in Buzzards Bay recorded a 120 mph wind gust. Private anemometers in Falmouth recorded unofficial 150 mph gusts, and a fishing boat off Cuttyhunk reported a 162 mph gust.

Cape Cod evacuated, and an 11 mile backup gridlocked the Sagamoe Bridge. It was even worse in Maine, where an evacuating President Bush closed Route 95 so he could have direct access to the Air Force base he was bugging out of Kennebunkport to. Thousands of evacuees were delayed.

The storm hit during the height of Tourist Season, during yet another Bush-led recession. Cape Cod essentially shut down until the summer of 1992, and they were still resolving issues from it when I moved here in 2005.

500,000 people were left without power, including all of Cape Cod. Many places on Cape Cod were just getting it back by October, just in time to watch Perfect Storm highlights.

The Halloween Gale

I lived in Duxbury in 1991, and nothing happened to us at all during Bob... the water didn't even reach the seawall.

We paid for it in October, though.

A fading hurricane merged with a low pressure system to form a new hurricane. The fading one was Grace, the new one was eventually named Henri.

Henri actually wasn't named at first, and has only gained a title after the fact. The NHC felt that naming Henri would create a panic. Henri later inspired a novel and a George Clooney/Marky Mark film about some doomed fishermen.

Where Bob hammered south-facing beaches, Henri (aka the Halloween Gale, the No Name Storm, or/and the Perfect Storm, although locals use "Halloween Gale" or "No Name Storm" among each other, and only use "Perfect Storm" when talking to tourists) gave it to the eastern ones. My house in Duxbury was destroyed by this storm, which hung around for 6-8 tides.

This, and the more nor'easterish Blizzard of '78, were the ones where Boston TV weathermen acquired their reputation for uselessness. I can recall watching Dick Albert say "Hurricane Grace, way offshore, not an issue for us, may get windy at the coast for a while," about 16 hours before I was trapped in my house on some Andrea Gail sh*t.

After this series of beatings, we again entered another dormant stage where the best we could do were nor'easters and remnant storms from other states. We're still sort of in that dormant state, although the fringe storms are hitting us more frequently now.

Hurricane Earl

New England was fearing the worst in 2010 as Hurricane Earl made his way towards us. All indications pointed to another Bob. I think I wrote 20 articles chronicling Earl's approach. When I went to bed, Earl was heading straight towards us. By the time I woke up, he had veered out to sea. You could golf that day.

Earl did kick up tropical storm winds, and much of Cape Cod lost power to a not-that-bad storm. Due to inefficient asset allocation by NSTAR, power was out for more than a week in some spots.

Hurricane Irene

Much like Earl, 2011's Irene was a wimp that staggered no one but NSTAR. Power was out for almost 2 weeks for some people.

Hurricane Sandy

2012's heavy hitter whaled on Noo Yawk, but it wasn't that bad up here. More damage was done by a Wareham microburst a week later than was done during Sandy, and a series of blizzards and nor'easters also did greater damage than Sandy. Some Cape Codders lost power, but it was nothing like the power loss during the 2013 blizzard.

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Like I said before.... if we have to update his, you probably have 5 feet of water in your basement.

Someone Has To Stop The Bourne Rotary Dunkin' Donuts!

It's not often that I write an article with zero (0) certainty that what I'm actually writing about is true, but today is one of those days.

Bourne locals were saddened to see the iconic IHOP restaurant closing at the rotary on the Cape side of the Bourne Bridge. You have to drive to Plymouth to get a Rooty Tooty Big And Fruity now. You lose an easy place for tourists to find, eliminating the "Park at the IHOP, and I'll meet you there" directions-giving option.

But the smarter locals also looked at the closing of IHOP and wondered what sort of Traffic Nightmare would be going in place of the IHOP. These concerns spiked recently, as it appears that some work is being performed on the property.

Once you think on it a bit, only a few businesses would even WANT that spot. I'm sure that "everyone coming or going to Cape Cod drives by this spot" makes for an expensive rent, and "hope that potential customers can negotiate the death-weave they would need to perform to get out of the rotary and into your business" makes for a poor business model when combined with the price of that high visibility.

Only the heavy hitters can afford to laugh off those concerns, with "heavy hitters" meaning "businesses that never fail, no matter what."

In Canada, that equals "hockey gear manufacturer." In Texas, that means "gun dealer." In somewhere like Yemen, it might be where you put the Qu'a'a'ran store or something. In Massachusetts, it means either "package store" or "Dunkin' Donuts."

Massachusetts people, Massholes that we are, go sort of crazy for Dunkin' Donuts coffee. Some people will drink no other coffee. A popular internet meme during our blizzardy winter showed someone walking through a Jack London-style whiteout, with the caption saying "Wonder if Dunkin' is open?" Opening a franchise in California put lines of transplanted Easterners around the corner.

It is one of the few businesses in this rotten economy where demand exceeds supply. Allow me a moment to illustrate. It's about 5 miles as the crow flies from the Sagamore to the middle of the Cranberry Highway in East Wareham. This stretch runs through the edges of Sagamore Beach (population 2977), desolate Bournedale (I don't know B-dale's population, but it is much less than 3500), Bourne village (pop. 1800), a tiny edge of Wareham ( use Onset's 1500 population figure for part of Onset/part of East Wareham) and Buzzards Bay (nearly 4000). I'm including southern Cedarville, and excluding Cape-side Sandwich and Pocasset-area Bourne.

It is a useful way to go from the 25 East area to the 3 North area, but it stopped being a major route to Cape Cod with certain highway alterations in recent decades. The population doubles in the summer, or it gets cut in half in the winter, depending on how you view the glass of water. Aside from commuting and canal-walking, there is no reason at all from anyone who isn't from Bournedale or Buzzards Bay to go to Bournedale or Buzzards Bay. We're a backwater, sharing a "we're a nowhere that the roads to everywhere go through" status with places like Afghanistan and Gettysburg.

It is a strip where a Burger King failed, and which hasn't been able to support a supermarket for 20-30 pre-Market Basket years. We're a college town that can't support a nightclub. IHOP just died there. Main Street in Buzzards Bay is really not that far away from being a ghost town.

This is amazing, because the area suffers from Los Angeles-style gridlock.

This stretch I mentioned still supports 6 and as many as 7 Dunkin' Donuts, depending on how you score MacArthur, Sandwich, Cedarville and East Wareham. The lines of traffic pouring in and out of these places snarl the roads around them, and even kills someone in Wareham now and then. This area also supports a Starbuck's, a Honey Dew, and 2-3 Marylou's. Whatever fault you may ascribe to Yankees, Swamp Yankees, Massholes, Hoodsies or Cape Coddas, even a hater would have to admit that we are a hard-working lot who essentially need to swim in coffee.

There is a huge Dunkin void in the Cape-side Bourne Bridge area. Whoever fills it will become a millionaire, pretty much with a snap of the fingers. This hypothetical franchisee will also create a few baker's dozens of low-wage, go-nowhere jobs. You'll be able to get coffee more quickly... maybe. The town will get some guaranteed tax income.

Those are all the good points.

The bad point, and it's a big point, is that a Dunkin's would snarl up traffic. Not only would it jam up a road, it would jam up an already busy road. What's worse, Dunkin's prime business hours would fall during the prime traffic hours at the rotary.

Here are a few scenarios I envision:

- People turning out of the rotary and heading up the bridge will be slamming into people exiting the Dunkin'.

- Many people, including (to some extent) Randy Hunt and Wendy Northcross, feel that the big problem with the Sagamore traffic is that god-awful on-ramp just before the Christmas Tree Shop. It kills any chance of traffic fluidity on Route 6, Route 6A, Route 130, and any/all side roads during peak traffic periods. A Dunkin, sited closer to the Bourne Bridge and with not one but two curb-cutting exits, would be worse.

- Given the right ratio of big car/little car and sited properly, you could have a big diesel semi truck knock one of those little smart cars into the Canal, maybe rolling it through a house first. You can put some nuns and/or orphans into the smaller car if you need more gravitas with your worst-case scenarios.

- I spy superhero state troopers and EMT types being T-boned as they respond to emergency situations by some guy who is shoving a Gronk Sandwich into his face as he blindly force-merges into bridge traffic.

- Wampanoag babies suddenly experience an uptick in gridlock-related names, and schools start signing up kids named "Waits In Traffic" and "Curses At Fords."

- I'm recycling some old material here, but Bourne residents have a different perception of ETA than other residents of the same basic part of the state have. If you ask someone from Carver and someone from Bourne to go to some equidistant point between the two towns, the Carver man can immediately give an ETA, while the Bourne guy will have to pause, factor in traffic, and then give his answer. This DD scenario would make that worse.

- Some old woman at this time next year will die and go to her eternal reward just after her kids blow her off on Mother's Day from 9 miles away because of rotary traffic.

- Depending on who you believe, a flyover will eventually go in here. Some people say that's why the IHOP declined on renewing their lease. A massive construction project with a bustling coffee shop jammed in there wouldn't get complicated or anything.

- Along the lines of the myth that Eskimoes have over 200 words for snow, Bourne residents would have to learn yet another traffic term... "Winter-morning coffee run rotary traffic" is what I am working with now. I don't think anyone else in the USA would have that particular problem.

- Bourne town officials have suggested that the state buy the site and tear it down.

- Wicked Local Bourne alleges that at least one "well-known coffee franchise" has put out feelers on the site.

- While I think they lost in the end, the Sorrenti Brothers (or something like that) lost out on a settlement when a flyover cut their gas station off from the former Sagamore rotary. However, they were very close to getting a multi-million dollar payout. Would a decade of Dunkin be worth that financial risk?

- If you are going to wedge a business in there, does it really have to be a high-volume, quick-hitter? At least each customer at the IHOP sat there for 45 minutes. People are in and out of Dunkin Donuts, and thus in and out of bridge and rotary traffic, every 30 seconds or so.

- How many people would make money off this? The town makes some tax money, maybe gets another teacher or a firefighter. The franchisee will make money hand over fist. The coffee jockeys will make a starvation wage, and may have to be imported from New Bedford. Does that scratch cancel out the lost revenue we'd get from a major uptick in traffic gridlock at one of the only two ways off of the Cape?

- Road rage incidents before people get their coffee are worse than their opposite numbers. Road rage incidents where someone actually got their coffee, but had it spill into their lap after an accident before they could drink any of it... those, my friend, always turn bloody, even if the two people in the accident are Jesus and Martin Luther King.

- Would a needless DD in the Bourne Rotary be the end of the DD in the struggling Buzzards Bay rotary? Will some millionaire getting an extra million be worth landing yet another deathblow on the Buzz?

- Would the State Police be forced to close the rotary Dunkin Donuts during evacuation situations like hurricanes or Pilgrim nuclear incidents?

- Just imagine the average driver exiting that DD at the foot of the bridge. Think of the delays, the nudging-the-nose-outs, the skidding stops, the oblivious or aggressive driver interaction. Disregard the good drivers for a moment, and focus on the average driver. Then, as George Carlin said, remember that half of the drivers are even stupider than he or she is.

- Remember... right now, the Bourne Bridge is the faster bridge, although's Sagamore's problem is more volume (Sagamore does a 67/33 share of the traffic with the Bourne Bridge) than design.

- At least one person on my Facebook has intimated that calling it "IHOP" instead of "Big Boy's" is sort of like wearing a YOUNGBLOOD t-shirt. Older folks still call it "Howard Johnson's" now and then.

- I plan to get a good viewing spot and wait for someone to do a sudden, high-speed, blind cross over two rotary lanes where they then cut off the two IHOP exits as a sort of Fool's Coda. Just offhand, sitting at my desk, I get the sense that either a near-miss or a fatality may strengthen my faith in God, Evolution, Either, Neither, or Both.

- As we have said before, people who study Higher Math speak of a strange phenomena called the Bourne Paradox. It essentially, if you'll forgive my difficulty with the details, means that a point occurred in history where the amount of travel-time lost in Bourne traffic surpassed the amount of time Man has existed as a species. It pretty much disproves Math, and maybe God. The math works when you consider that multiple people commute in many cars, but the working math also dispels Math. It's what Einstein killed himself over.

Now, whoever owns this property has the right to rent it to whoever the heck they want to rent it to, even the Taliban or the KKK. Who are we to tell him otherwise?

It's tough to fault a guy who will give us a patrolman-sized tax payoff every year, who will employ a few dozen low-skill workers in a fairly secure job with 24/7/365 shifts, who will feed our hungry commuters, and who will hand us our morning coffee every day.

I suppose that my own political philosophy forces me to be willing to suffer a bit rather than have the government telling businesses who they can rent to. However, you can almost paint it as a public safety issue. I'm torn on it, to an extent.

If I can sneak in and out of there during off hours and get one of those little croissants with the bacon and cheese... at that exact moment, this reporter would be For this project.

However, the rest of the time, it will be a traffic nightmare of the highest order, imposed upon an area that was pretty close to already being a traffic nightmare of the highest order. Bourne has been begging for help with traffic for decades, and we instead get nothing but Mo Traffic.

We're about to take a traffic gut-punch, there's nothing we can do about it, and it will hit us all day, every day, as long as it stands. I think maybe 30 people benefit from it.

I suppose the area needs a high end business that maybe one person goes to now and then and spends a bunch of money. Maybe something with a high-end window-shopping appeal, like a Ferrari dealership. Everything else is a bad idea... and that also goes for you, Ronald McDonald.

Mainland Bourne should strongly consider that they may have to secede, name themselves "Gridlock," start suing somebody over the traffic, and blow those bridges down like the Big Bad Bourne Wolf. You know in your red, white and blue heart that George Washington wouldn't have taken this sh*t.