It was dramatic, you have to give Sandy that. About eight last night, a dramatic set of explosions with pink and green flashes was followed by a bright white pulse. And then the lights went out. Water started rising rapidly to the west of us, crossing Tenth Avenue and to the East, reaching as far as Avenue B. It was all over the FDR, down 34th St, 14th St, 4th St. There was a time when you began to wonder if it would reach us in the middle of Manhattan (just by Washington Square Park in the NYU housing). Then at 10.30pm Twitter reports indicated the water was falling back. We turned off the phones to save batteries and went to sleep.

Daylight revealed a plethora of problems. No power means no water in an apartment block like ours. No elevators of course. And we’re on the 14th floor. A look outside the door revealed that the exit signs and emergency lights on the stairs weren’t working. A long walk down revealed that all of downtown was without power. Long Island–one alternative destination for us–was just as bad. It became clear that solutions were days away. While we had many containers of water, it turns out that a manual flush uses a lot. Time to leave. Right now, I’m occupying New Haven, CT, where there are plenty of trees down but the power is still on.

And also to ask questions. From the radio, we learned that NYU Langone hospital had a defective back-up generator, leading to an emergency evacuation last night. As we drove past it today, a fleet of private ambulances with yellow stickers indicating that they had been commissioned by FEMA were lined up outside. No other sign of FEMA by the way. Why was so basic a safety system insecure? Why did the expensive and noisy building of the NYU Co-Generation plant not protect at least the water supply for its residences? And so on. All those infrastructure dollars shaved off budgets over the neo-liberal expansion years now stand revealed as essential, not dispensable.

The real bottom line of the hurricane is, as you know, that all the warnings and predictions so many have made about the game-changing effects of climate change. You can measure this from one simple figure. In 1821, the highest water level previously recorded at New York was 11.21 feet. To be prudent, Con Ed, the local electricity company, builds its facilities to be capable of withstanding not just this flood but one two feet higher. Only last night we went clean over 13.5 feet and the electric grid went down.

So much about Sandy is unprecedented, but none of it was unpredicted. There was very little rain by hurricane standards in New York. The wind was fierce certainly but it was a tropical storm, not even a hurricane. These events are about water level and water temperature. Sandy kept energy all the way to New York because the Gulf Stream is abnormally warm after the hot summer. The water levels are higher due to the ongoing effects of climate change. With the massive melt in the Arctic this year more water is liquid in the Atlantic than usual. As we saw in Japan last year, relatively small rises in sea level when compressed in high sea level events by wind or other forces result in extraordinary high waves, tides and storm surges.

The only surprise for anyone who has followed climate and ocean change news reports, let alone the scientific literature, is that it’s happening somewhat faster than expected. As I have observed on several occasions in this writing project, at some point the debate over Zuccotti Park would become academic because it would be underwater. Given that Wall Street was reported flooded last night, I’m assuming that happened last night. And from a New York-centric point of view, we dodged the real bullet yesterday because New Jersey took the worst of the storm.

Governor Cuomo has been talking extensively about the changed weather pattern but only  in terms of how to defend and prepare. We’ll have to do that of course. But unless we change the patterns of our existence, none of it will matter. A long, dreary clean-up is ahead. Let’s make the emergency into the emergence of a new pattern of everyday life that works on the understanding that there’s a new normal.