Tropical Storm Warning For Cape Cod, South Coast; MEMA Situational Awareness Statement

(Editor's Note... we'll be on the road all week to get you some storm pictures. For now, we'll turn it over to MEMA)

MASSACHUSETTS EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY
SITUATIONAL AWARENESS STATEMENT

DATE: September 4, 2016
TIME: 9:00 AM
SUBJECT: Tropical Storm Hermine

Situation:
No significant changes were made to the forecast overnight and Hermine remains a post-tropical storm with little change in strength expected today. At 5 AM the post-tropical storm was located about 305 miles south-southeast of the eastern tip of Long Island with maximum sustained winds of 65 mph moving to the east-northeast at 12 mph and a minimum central pressure of 998 mb. The National Weather Service continues to expect a glancing blow to the south coast, Cape Cod and the Islands mainly tonight into Monday morning. The primary concern continues to be 40-50 mph wind gusts on the south coast, Cape Cod and Islands resulting in some downed trees and scattered power outages tonight into Monday afternoon. Hermine is expected to slow down and turn northward later today. Southeastern Massachusetts, to include the south coast, Cape Cod, and Islands remains in the Cone of Error for this storm.

Forecast and Impacts:
The post-tropical cyclone is expected to turn toward the northeast and north with a decrease in forward speed expected later today, followed by a slow northward to northwestward motion through Monday. On the forecast track, the center of Hermine will meander slowly offshore of the mid-Atlantic coast for the next couple of days. While little change in strength is expected today, Hermine is forecast to intensify to Hurricane Force tonight and on Monday.

Hermine continues to have a large wind field with Tropical Storm force winds extending outward up to 205 miles from the center. The wind threat from Hermine is expected to come in two pulses, with the strongest tonight into Monday afternoon. The other (less certainty at this time) will be on Tuesday as the storm pulls away. Isolated downed tree limbs are possible across eastern Massachusetts with 25-35 mph wind gusts tonight into Monday with scattered tree and powerline damage possible along the south coast area. Despite the winds not being too extreme, drought exhausted trees could fall more easily. Expect a long duration of high surf, dangerous rip currents, beach erosion and wind gusts to Tropical Storm force on the southern waters and south coast and Islands. Mariners should expect a period of strong winds and rain beginning on Sunday afternoon and lasting through Monday with wind gusts to 45 knots and seas of 15-20 feet across southern waters. There is a low risk for minor coastal flooding, and riverine flooding is not expected to pose a significant threat due to ongoing drought conditions across much of the Commonwealth.

National Weather Service has provided the following most likely scenario at this time:

· 30-50 mph wind gusts with the strongest winds focused along the immediate South Coast and the Cape and Islands.

· Up to 1 to 2 inches of rain, focused mainly across Cape Cod and the Islands

· Rough surf and dangerous rip currents

· Minor beach erosion

· Marine impacts with wind gusts to 45 knots, and seas 15 – 20 feet over southern waters

National Weather Service has provided the following reasonable worst case scenario at this time (if Hermine takes a more northerly track than forecast by Monday into Tuesday):

· 40-50 mph wind gusts farther inland to the RI/CT border, with more gusts to 50 mph.

· 2 to 3 inches of rain on Cape Cod and the Islands

· Minor coastal flooding

· Moderate beach erosion

· Marine impacts, with wind gusts to 55 knots, and seas 20-25 feet over southern waters

Watches and Warnings:
· Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for the outer waters from Provincetown, MA to Montauk, NY. Strongest winds will be tonight with gusts of 50 knots possible. Seas will build rapidly today and may reach at least 20 feet south of the Islands by tonight.

· A Tropical Storm Watch remains in effect from Watch Hill, RI to Sagamore Beach, MA to include Narragansett and Buzzards Bay and Nantucket and Vineyard Sounds. Tropical storm force winds associated with Hermine will likely develop this evening and tonight and persist into Monday morning. The strongest winds will occur tonight with gusts 40-45 knots, especially over open waters. Seas will rapidly build today and may reach 10-15 feet tonight.

· A Gale Warning is in effect from 11 PM tonight to 8 AM Monday for Cape Cod Bay, coastal waters east of Ipswich Bay and the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary with northeast winds 20-30 knots gusting to 35 knots and seas 7-12 feet.

What we do not know at this time:
· Exactly how far north the edge of the Tropical Storm force winds will reach before Hermine loops back to the Southwest

· How strong Hermine will be when it passes Southeast of New England and what exactly that means for the second pulse on Tuesday.

· What accumulated erosion effects may occur from what looks to be a long duration period of storm surge and high waves.

Rainfall Forecast through Thursday AM

Current NWS Headlines – Watches, Warnings and Advisories

Marine:
Based on National Weather Service and National Hurricane Center forecasts regarding Tropical Storm Hermine, the Captain of the Port, Southeastern New England, has set Port Condition WHISKEY. While ports in Southeastern New England remain open to all commercial traffic, the following preparatory measure is effective immediately:
Owners, operators or agents of all self-propelled oceangoing vessels over 500 gross tonnage and all barges and their supporting tugs must report their intention to depart or remain in port to Sector Southeastern New England within 24 hours.
The Coast Guard will continue to monitor Tropical Storm Hermine and, if necessary, may implement preventative measures to ensure the safety of mariners, vessels, and waterfront facilities. Possible preventative measures include, but are not limited to, terminating lightering or transfer operations, rescinding permits for marine events, and directing vessel arrivals/departures to/from port.

The NWS has issues a Small Craft Advisory for 6 AM Sunday to 8 PM Monday for Massachusetts and Ipswich Bay.

Ferry Services Update (as of 0800):

Steamship Authority – Anticipates the cancellation of Nantucket ferry runs sometime this afternoon, as the wind picks up. They anticipate that the Vineyard Route may also be impacted before the end of scheduled trips. All ferries are operating as scheduled at this time.

Hy-Line Cruises – Service to Martha’s Vineyard has been suspended for today and Tomorrow, as well as inter-island service from Martha’s Vineyard to Nantucket. Hyannis to Nantucket is still operating, however it is weather dependent.

Island Queen Falmouth - Canceled all trips Sunday and Monday, Trip by Trip Basis Tuesday, and Wednesday.

Seastreak New Bedford- Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket trips, Canceled Sunday through Tuesday, or when the Hurricane barrier in New Bedford reopens. Could be later than Tuesday depending in the impact of the storm.

Seastreak NY – New York To Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, Canceled for Monday (anticipates running Sunday) Operates Friday’s and Sunday’s and Labor Day.

Rhode Island Fast Ferry- Quonset Point to Martha’s Vineyard canceled all Ferries Sunday through Tuesday

New Bedford Hurricane Barrier is anticipating closing Sunday and anticipates reopening on Tuesday, Possible sooner or later depending on the track of the storm.

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other....

"Cranberry County" is a sweeping term that we use to cover the South Shore, the South Coast, Cape Cod and the Islands. It's a relatively homogeneous area.

While great differences exist from town-to-town (and even from one section of a town to another), they are a degree of Great where the differences might not be so apparent if you aren't from the region.

While people from Duxbury may think of people from Marshfield as a lower species of talking ape, we all look alike to someone from Angola.

However, the differences are often extraordinary when examined by a local.

Some of the differences are socioeconomic, some are racial, some are urban/suburban, some are ageist (not sure if that's a word, but it is now) and some are so subtle that I'm not sure what they are and I am only writing about them because I am aware that some locals feel that differences exist.

We'll see what's up with these differences... this week, in Cranberry County Magazine!

Plymouth and the Pinehills

Plymouth is a huge town. It is the largest municipality in Massachusetts. It has more land area than Boston and Worcester combined, with Everett, Charlestown and Somerville thrown in.

A working understanding of Population Density can explain the population differences between Boston and Plymouth, and that means a lot here. Much of Plymouth is rural or even undeveloped.

It's not as bad Now as it was Then. Much of Southern Plymouth was forest until recently. There were parts of the forest that had higher Wampanoag population totals than White Guy totals. Population booms in towns just north of Plymouth in the 1970s showed that maybe the limits of "tolerable commute from Boston" had not been reached yet. Many developers noticed this.

Soon enough, you had some massive building projects going on down there in the hinterlands. The 12.4 kilometer land area of the Pinehills neighborhood is about the same size as Arlington, Massachusetts (population: 44,000). The Ponds Of Plymouth neighborhood is large enough that it redrew a Congressional district. Both of these areas were literally carved out of the forest.

The Pinehills have 3000 homes, many of which are Luxury homes. They pay $9.5 million in taxes, making them the second largest taxpayer in town after the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant ($9.7 million in 2011, the Pinehills may have passed them).... and the PNPP ain't in town for the long term, Jack. The Pinehills are the proverbial 9.5 million pound gorilla, and that influence will skyrocket soon enough.

The arrival of these heavyweights forever changed the landscape of Southern Plymouth. Formerly a ponds-driven resort community dotted with cottages and cabins (a Boston Globe article said that the Pinehills area was "only good for hunting" before development), the formerly uninhabited areas- consisting of sort of Cedarville, sort of West Wind Shores Shores, sort of Manomet, and really none of the above- bleed over into the Irish Riviera-influenced coastline.

The long-term, pre-Pinehills residents of the area seem pretty cool about the arrival of the luxury housing. The Pinehills are generally self-sufficient, and were dropped down where they aren't in anyone's way. Most recognize that people paying $10 million a year in taxes are worth whatever problems may arise with traffic, population density and water concerns.

The one form of resentment that I saw (and I went trolling for Pinehills hatred on several area-themed Facebook pages) involved the belief that the Pinehills live in their own little world. It is very self-contained, having their own shops, gas stations and even a fire station. Pinehills people have very little reason to mix in among the rabble, and everybody knows it. "It's like a town unto itself" was a prevailing sentiment.

It does make you wonder when the Pinehills people and the Ponds Of Plymouth people will realize that they are carrying a large % of the town's tax burden on their shoulders, and maybe strike out on their own? Annex Cedarville's White Cliffs neighborhood for beach access, swallow up some pond neighborhoods for future gentrification... and then secede. They could probably apply for admission to Cape Cod, if they keep the Median Household Income high enough.

Google Map that ish and tell me that I'm not on to something. Sounds like a good future article.

Duxbury and the Irish Riviera 

Duxbury is a tony town of 15,000 souls, and the folks from other local towns call it "Deluxebury."

While the wealth is not ostentatious (if you drive through town expecting to find Versailles on every block, you'll be disappointed), everybody on the South Shore knows what's up. It even drifts out to the Cape. Radio talk-show host Ed Lambert from WXTK, who works in Hyannis and lives further out on the Cape, always says "Deluxebury" when referring to the Plymouth County town.

So, in posh Deluxebury, what's up with that sandy cottage village on the ocean side of the Powder Point Bridge? Why, it's none other than Duxbury's little slice of the Irish Riviera!

The Irish Riviera is a strip of often seasonal coastal housing built more along cottage standards than as a place where you might think about hanging a chandelier. It is a distinct cultural entity which runs mostly unchanged down the Massachusetts coast from Quincy to the edge of Cape Cod.

Access to Boston via Route 3 in the 1950s and especially the Boston Busing Crisis of the 1970s doubled the population of most South Shore towns. This made the Irish Riviera more of a year-round thing.

While Duxbury Beach is mostly uninhabited, what inhabitants there are stand firmly in the camp of the Irish Riviera. Heavily blue collar, overwhelmingly Catholic, generally seasonal and very, very Irish (my friends growing up there included Kerrigans, Branns, McDaniels, Deehans, McLaughlins, Duffys  and several spellings of "Reed")  the residents differ noticeably from the Pilgrim descendants roaming through Duxbury Proper.

I grew up on Duxbury Beach, and most of my classmates instantly recognized me as a non-native Duxburian. Many of them to this day think that I grew up in Marshfield, either literally or culturally.

The neighborhood is slowly being gentrified, as wealthier people buy up cottages and jam as much lumber as they can into the footprint of the original cottage. Property values soar, and the blue collar Irish Riviera crowd will be squeezed out of the neighborhood by whatever they call Yuppies these days. Many of my old neighbors (I migrated to the Cape a dozen years ago) tell me that it isn't the same neighborhood these days.

For now, however, the Irish Riviera still runs through Duxbury.

Note that Mosquito Village very nearly took the Duxbury section of this article, but I went for my old neighborhood as a sort of professional courtesy.


Brockton and the South Shore

Duxbury Beach is the story of an Irish-American, Boston-to-suburbia exodus. Brockton is an older tale, and it involves putting shoes on people.

Brockton was originally a part of Duxbury, but you wouldn't guess that now. They are completely unalike. It's a lot like the old George Carlin "baseball is pastoral, football is technological" routine. Duxbury is suburban, almost rural. Brockton is urban. Duxbury is very white. Brockton is very black. Duxbury has a small population over a large land area, while Brockton jams a lot of people into a small space. Duxbury is wealthy, Brockton is poor. Duxbury kids are pampered, Brockton kids are among the toughest in the world.

Duxbury is basically like every other town in Plymouth County.... Brockton, uhm, isn't.

How did that come to be?

Brockton's position on the Salisbury Plain River allowed it to operate mills, and these mills expanded steadily throughout the early Industrial era.  While the Carvers and Marshfields of the area were primarily farming communities with sparse peopling, Brockton's burgeoning industries (by the time of the Civil War, they were America's leading manufacturer of shoes) produced a high-density, urban entity.

The differences soon became apparent. Wareham is a good-sized Plymouth County town, home to 22,000 people in 2010. Brockton had that reached that population in 1875. By 2010, Brockton (93,000 peope or so) made up about 20% of Plymouth County's nearly half million residents... jammed into 2% of the land area.

As you may have guessed, very few of those people are white millionaires who prefer to live in a triple-decker with two Dominican families. The median income in Brockton is about $21K, well below the Plymouth County's $35K. 14% of Brockton residents are below the poverty line, as opposed to 4-6% in Plymouth County... which, I hate to add, includes the Brockton numbers as 20% of the total.

Brockton kids are as tough as it gets. Two of Brockton's residents have ruled very competitive and prestigious boxing weight classes in the last 50 years or so, no mean feat for a city that is just 1 of the 25,375 cities, towns and incorporated places in the US. If your town's "notable residents" has "Marvin Hagler" listed, and he isn't the immediate undisputed answer for the "toughest guy who ever walked these streets" argument... you live in a pretty tough town, my friend.

This is funny, because if you went to Central Casting and asked for a typical Plymouth County resident, you'd probably get some butter-soft Cohasset trust fund WASP.

Brockton provides almost all of Plymouth County's street credibility, sporting a robust 43.1 black majority.  Plymouth County's 7-8% blackness is almost entirely based in Brockton. Duxbury, holding down the other side of the see-saw, is .6% black. Duxbury does rank above Brockton in "drive-by shootings of a prominent rapper."



The Wedge and Hyannis Port

Following the Rich Man, Poor Man theme, let's carve up a region where the Kennedy Compound and a very busy Salvation Army center are 5000 feet apart.

"The Wedge" is a part of Hyannis that has a higher poverty/crime rate than her surrounding neighborhoods. It is the area south of Route 28 around where the Cape Cod Mall is. It forms a sort of Triangle, which draws unfortunate comparisons to the ones in Bermuda and Bridgewater.

It hosts a goodly portion of Cape Cod's poor, and some of them are lacking Camelot levels of cash flow. There is also a lively drug trade at work in the region, and you can get your hat handed to you if you mess with the wrong group of people.

It's not Roxbury. You could put on a shirt made of money and walk through the toughest part of the Wedge yelling threats at midnight, and your chances of survival would be a healthy 46%.  It would be about .46% if you did it in certain parts of Dorchester, and it would only get that high because a good portion of Americans believe that the gods speak through the mentally ill.

The Wedge (aka "Captain's Quarters) is not as bad as this article makes it out to be, an article where the author urges Zero Tolerance/Shock And Awe tactics on a neighborhood about the size of a mall, but you have to view things in their proper context.

Not that far down the road, you have a Summer White House, perhaps the most well-known one ever. It's where Jackie O and JFK got in the yacht and had those "How many butlers and maids should we hire this summer" conversations that you and I don't have.

I doubt that, when Jackie O was deciding which one of her hats to wear, she ever said "Oh dear, I'd better not go with blue, it could be mistaken for Crip affiliation five blocks over. Someone might blow my husband's head off."

Note that we almost went with Onset Waterfront/Shangri-La for a Wareham tangent, but the article is getting lengthy. Both towns battle over the "Brockton-by-the-sea" nickname, with "Sea Lowell" and "she's like a baby Lynn" also in the mix in SE Massachusetts conversations about the 'Ham. I personally know a guy in Wareham who has performed more murders in his travels than the entire town of Duxbury has suffered for as far back as my admittedly-shoddy memory goes.

Chatham and Harwich

Here's one of those comparisons that makes no sense to an out-of-towner. I live on Cape Cod, too... albeit the Upper Cape. I consider this to be close to a family-style dispute that anyone with a brain stays out of. So, into the dispute we go...

The differences between these two towns are piddling, if that's the right word. Chatham has a $45K median income, while Harwich is at 41K. That's like, uhm, $80 a week or so, no? Chatham and Harwich are 95-96% white. They are both tourist-dependent, like a junkie and the smack. If you say something stupid at a tavern about fishing or driving a boat or lobstering in either town, there will be no shortage of people willing to correct you.

I list them here because I recall there being some acrimony when they regionalized the schools and created Monomoy High School. I voted for Charwich (which would have given restaurants in both towns the opportunity to create a hyper-local sandwich), but I'm not a resident.

I think that the beef was over how to fund the high school. Harwich is just about twice as large as Chatham, and the financial split may have been less than fair originally.

There may also be questions about the rate of development and the changing face of the Outer Cape. In 1960, Chatham had 3273 residents, and Harwich had 3747 residents. Harwich then almost tripled their population by 1990, while Chatham barely doubled theirs. I should add that these differences vanish quickly when Chatham's summer population skyrockets to 30K and Harwich moves past 40K. Then, they just all hate summer people.

There is an element of two twins fighting over which one is prettier here, but I think that I may have overestimated the acrimony that exists between the two towns. If I missed some point of contention, hit me up in the comments.

Gurnet/Saquish and the Post-Industrial Era

Whatever problems Brockton may have, somebody at least was decent enough to run a power line through town. You don't need an off-road vehicle to get around. A really big wave doesn't cut it off from the rest of the word.

Residents of Gurnet Point and Saquish Head have those problems. The cool part? They like it that way.

Way out on the end of Duxbury Beach (it's actually Plymouth, but that would only confuse you if you were looking for it on a map), there are two tiny villages.

They have no electricity out there, and survive on firewood, propane, solar and wind energy. It is as Cottage as any beach gets around here, or pretty much anywhere.

Many who see it up close think that it may just be the greatest place ever, myself included. If you take away the Jeeps, it's basically 1850 until you look in the cottages and see laptops, portable radios and newspapers writing about a black US President, space shuttles and so forth.

They're aware of the modern world, so it's not like that M. Night Shyamalan (?) village movie out there. It'd never work... not enough trees. They could see modern stuff, including a nuclear reactor, just across the bay in Plymouth proper. You could maybe pull it off with a bunch of fog machines, but a good wind might spoil the ruse.

Dennis-Yarmouth/Yarmouth-Dennis

They're here at the end because I have always admired how they worked out the naming thing. Chatham and Harwich have Monomoy to fall back on when circumstance forces them to team up. D-Y found another way.

Simply put... the high school is known as Dennis-Yarmouth, and the baseball team in the Cape League is known as Yarmouth-Dennis. D-Y is in effect for more months of the year, but Y-D is in effect when the population is at the highest point.

Everything balances, and everyone goes home happy.

Speaking of which, I'm out of towns. Let me know who we forgot!

Thanks to Heidi Woodmansee Sullivan, Kerri Yankovicth-Smith (Marine Mom!), Scott Rodrigues and the Duxbury Beach Resident's Association for help with the pics.

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Iconic Regional Businesses: Cape Cod

Marylou's, although popular on the Cape, is a South Shore brand. Never hurts to lead off with a Lou, however... especially a Sagamore one.

(Check out our SOUTH COAST and our SOUTH SHORE versions of this article. Same intro, different businesses)

Life has bounced me from Boston to Quincy to Duxbury to Worcester (back) to Duxbury to Monponsett to Cape Motherlovin' Cod. I've seen them come and go, friend.

One thing that I noticed as I hopped around was that some business chains I got used to in one spot would either not exist in another spot, or some other product in the same field would be dominant in this new region.

I'd also see businesses that started in one spot springing up everywhere. That's always nice to see, especially with something you grew up loving... it sort of affirms your sense of good taste for you.

One other phenomena I'd see is that, while my friends and I might favor one particular local place or another, we'd have a regional default option. To use an example with a powerful business not born of these parts... we both might want a burger. I like Schmuckburgers over on Main Street. You like Ye Olde Slaughtered Cow on the State Road. However, there's always McDonald's.

Massachusetts is a funny place. We like things a certain way. There is an impressive list of otherwise nationally prosperous franchises who flop in Massachusetts. Pizza Hut, Papa John, Little Caesar and Domino's all struggle in Massachusetts, as locals often prefer their town's House Of Pizza. Locals laugh, especially near the coast, if you ask where the Red Lobster is. You might get punched, especially in Italian neighborhoods, if you ask where The Olive Garden is. IHOP and Krispy Kreme may be the biggest names crossed off of the Dunkin' Donut's hit list.

Today, we shall examine a few businesses which have that sort of regional recognition. Some people explore the world. Some people explore regions of it. If you are a regional tourist, look at this as a sort of Bucket List. You should be familiar with all of these businesses we are about to discuss, You can get your Local card pulled, otherwise.

Someone who never went to the Cape as a kid might not know the Thompson's Clam Bar jingle, while someone from Harwich might think that Peaceful Meadows is a pet cemetery. View these places as a sort of Mendoza Line. Thompson's never expanded regionally, and Peaceful Meadows might be an ounce of Swagger away from being listed down below.

I broke this list up by Barnstable/Plymouth/Bristol County, although it could very easily be Cape Cod/South Shore/South Coast. I had to stretch up to Mansfield to fatten the South Coast category, but it's still Bristol, babe.

Here we go...

Barnstable County

Cape Cod Potato Chips

Cape Cod Potato Chips were first made in Hyannis, in 1980. The guy who founded CCPC had a $3,000 potato slicer, and had taken a one-week class in potato chip-making.

They use a kettle (as opposed to a conveyor belt like other chip-makers) to produce a crunchier potato chip. They were very unique in the industry when they appeared, and the business blew up like the Maine. Kettle chips are very prominent now, much because of CCPC.

They were bought out by Anheuser-Busch in 1985. They bought it back in 1996, before selling it again to Lance Inc. They do $30 million annually in sales. At one point, they were selling 80,000 bags of chips a day.

You might break off a tooth if you get one of the bottom-of-the-kettle chips, but there are worse reasons to go to a dentist.

Cape Cod Baseball League

Cape Cod doesn't have a monopoly on minor-league baseball. You can drive to Pawtucket and see higher-level minor league ball. Maine has the Sea Dogs, which is a cooler name than those used by any other local team. Brockton has or had the Rock Lobsters, and Plymouth has a team.

However, to paraphrase Ric Flair... if your team isn't in the Cape Cod Baseball League, you're playing catch-up ball, no matter what you tell yourself.

You're also sort of shorting yourself if you're on Cape Cod and not checking out a CCBBL game now and then. They've been in business since 1885, and are as integral to a proper Cape Cod vacation as swimming and lobster rolls.

They have ten teams running from Wareham to Harwich, and the season starts on June 10th.


Four Seas Ice Cream

Four Seas (not 4 Cs, that's Cape Cod Community College) Ice Cream has been in business since 1934. Cape Cod has always had a sweet tooth, even during the Great Depression.

Four Seas ranks highly on a national recognition scale, as many tourists have made sometimes daily trips to Four Seas a part of their vacation routine.

They were a seasonal business for some time, but they began selling ice cream to various shops and restaurants, and demand soon brought about year-round work.

Cape Cod Creamery also merits a mention in this field... but when they were naming ice cream after Cape Cod towns, they gave us Bourne Butter Pecan. I can't forgive that kind of slight.

Try to not eat Chappaquidick Chocolate Chip when driving, especially with people from Hyannis Port.

Christmas Tree Shops

If you want to see a man's facial expression collapse, get one trapped in a car and bring up the prospect of a "quick" stop at the Christmas Tree Shops. Dude may throw himself out onto the pavement at 65 mph.

However, mention it to your girlfriends when you all just cashed paychecks, and you have a pretty good night out planned... as long as said plan involves a stop somewhere for vineyard-based fortification.

Girls still are the primary arbiter of where the spending money gets spent, which is why the Christmas Tree Shops expanded all over the region, and why there is 24/7/365 sports programming on the telly back home where the husband hopefully got to stay.

The CTS was founded in Yarmouth in the 1950s, and- like Four Seas- was a seasonal business for a while. That all changed, and, well... Don't You just Lovvvve A Bargain?

You can bring your dog into the CTS, as long as it's one of those wussy purse dogs. Don't show up with your Rotty, and an eager Border Collie could do thousands of dollars worth of damage in there.


Barnstable Municipal Airport

They got a TV show out of Cape Air, which trumps almost everyone (see Captain Phillips, below) on this list.

Founded in 1928, it spent World War II being used as a base for anti-submarine planes. It is now Cape Cod's major airport.

You can land a 727 there, something I was not aware of.

Cape Air has a 91 plane fleet, including 83 Cessnas.

If you want to enjoy island life on Martha's Vineyard or Cape Cod without the getting-on-a-boat stuff, you're going to have to visit the Barnstable Municipal Airport.

Business picks up in the summer, as is often the case with Cape Cod businesses. Be sure to file a flight plan and stuff.


Massachusetts Maritime Academy

The Massachusetts Maritime Academy is only one small college, but it has a ripple effect throughout the globe. They touch a lot of businesses, as Harvard does. However, MMA guys get their hands a lot dirtier than (most) Harvard guys do.

Founded in 1891, MMA cranks out Merchant Marines. They then spread out to an untold number of businesses, shipping their products across the seas.

In that sense, the single-entity MMA is actually like a McDonald's or something similar. It's just that, instead of franchising out hamburger stands, they franchise out their developed talent to anyone

Speaking of McDonald's... unless all of those Chinese-factory-made Happy Meal toys float over to America on tsunami waves, there's a good chance that you can't even run a McDonald's without a few MMA grads.

Grads include Captain Phillips of Captain Phillips fame amd Emery Rice, who is credited with firing the first American shot of World War I. Rice also picked up a Navy Cross for ramming and sinking a U-Boat.

We'll buy him a pie from Monument Beach House Of Pizza for that!

Cheapest And Most Expensive Gas: Cape Cod Editon

Barry failed to pass the Bush Line for all-time highest gas prices, although Dubya saw lower gas prices under his reign than Obama did. Granted, they came either before 9/11 or after the economy was collapsing... Either way, a confident President Obama was happy to pose in local colors for our photographers in front of a Russian petroleum outlet during one of his recent state visits to Wareham.

We admit to spamming a lot of useless stuff over those Internets at times. You most likely won't be changed permanently by our coverage of 2 foot waves lapping up against Chapin Beach, or our visit to a Plympton pumpkin patch. I won't say we're 100% useless, because we might amuse you, but we're not really utilitarian.

Today, we plan on bein' Mighty Useful to you. We're going to go town-by-town and list the cheapest and most expensive gas prices you can find there. We're using the Massachusetts Gas Prices website for or numbers, and it's like Monday morning or something. These will be the prices reported to that site over the last 36 hours.

There may be some variation to the prices, as the price some station in Chatham is charging tourists on Saturday might not be what he's trying to run by the locals on Monday. We're just doing what we can for you, people.

Here we go:

Provincetown
Best = $2.42, Cumberland Farms, Shank Painter Rd
Worst = $2.45, Gulf, Bradford St.

Wellfleet
Best = $2.35, Wave, State Highway
Worst = $2.39, Mobil, State Highway

Orleans
Best = $2.33, Speedway (South Orleans Rd) and Cumberland Farms (Rte 6A)
No higher prices reported

Harwich
Best = $2.27, Mobil, Whip O Will Lne
Worst = $2.35, Speedway, Main St

Dennis
Best = $2.13, Mobil, Theophilis Smith Rd
Worst = $2.45, Shell, East-West Dennis Rd

Yarmouth
Best = $2.19, Speedway, Iyannough Road
Worst = $2.29, Shell, Station Ave

Brewster
$2.37, Main St, Mobil

Barnstable
Best = multiple at $2.19, on 28 and 132
Worst = $2.39, Mobil, Iyannough Rd

Mashpee
Best = $2.21, Stop & Shop, Falmouth Rd
Worst = $2.27, Shell, Nathan Ellis Highway

Falmouth
Best = $2.21, Cumberland Farms(2), Mobil, Sav-On, Johnny's Tune And Lube
Worst = $2.25, Mobil, Palmer Ave

Sandwich
Best = $2.27, Speedway, Forestdale Road
Worst = $2.39, Gulf, Route 6A

Bourne (Cape)
Best = $2.19, Gulf, Bourne Rotary
Worst = $2.29, CITGO, Sandwich Road

Bourne (Mainland)
Best = $2.12 (cash), Mobil full-serve
Worst = $2.29, Shell, Canal Road

Martha's Vineyard has the 3rd (CITGO) and 4th (Shell) worst gas prices listed on the site, $3.19 at both spots on Vineyard Haven. The worst in the state is $3.49, at a Newburyport Mobil. The cheapest gas listed was $1.93 at both Speedway and Prestige in Brockton.

Harwich Hurricane Planner

We have two maps from FEMA to check out today. The map above is a Hurricane Inundation map, and it depicts storm surge from a direct hit hurricane visiting Harwich at mean high tide. It also shows what sort of storm would be needed to soak certain regions, which we'll get to in a minute.

The map is from the combined efforts of FEMA, MEMA, NOAA and the NHC. They use the funny-weatherman-titled SLOSH model of storm surge estimation. They do not depict freshwater flooding.

The colors relate to the Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity, and break down like this:

Light Green = Category 1 hurricane. Hurricane Gloria was one of these, and the offshore Halloween Gale was, too. Although not a tropical system, the Blizzard of '78 did Cat. 1-style damage.

Dark Green = Category 2 hurricane. Hurricane Bob was one of these.

Yellow = Category 3 hurricane. We've only had five of these hit New England since the Other Man arrived in 1620, the most recent being Hurricane Carol in 1954.

Pink = Category 4 hurricane. We've had one in recorded New England history, and it struck in 1635.

Flesh = One Hundred Year FEMA Food Zone. This is the "100 year storm" you hear people speak of, but you have to go pre-Colombian to find them ("going pre-Colombian" means using salt marsh soil samples to look for sand layering associated with large hurricanes). New England has had storms in the Category 4+ level in the 1100s, the 1300s, and the 1400s.

Sorry about Flesh, but my knowledge of color names was and continues to be heavily influenced by whoever was in charge at Crayola in the 1970s.

We shall leave the street-by-street analysis to the reader, who can use the links I'll throw in at the end of the article to zoom in on their own house if it suits them.

Note that you don't need to be in a shaded area to get yourself a quick and sudden Ending. You can have a tree fall on you, have your car washed out in street flooding, step on a downed power line, get purged by looters, enjoy the Robespierre treatment from flying shingles, be summarily executed by National Guardsmen, or even stumble into a sharknado. There's no shortage of ways for you to get Left.

With that in mind, we now present to you the down-there-somewhere Evacuation Zone map.

Remember, you don't HAVE to leave when 5-0 tells you to. Also remember that the cop you read the Constitution to before the storm may be the one who has to fish you out of the drink when the ship hits the fan.

The E-map is easier to read, as it is made up of only two colors.

Red = Get Out.

Yellow = Get the f*** out.

Hurricane Inundation Maps

Evacuation Maps

Worst Hurricanes To Hit New England

List of all hurricanes to hit New England

FEMA

MEMA

NOAA

NHC