MARKET WATCH COLUMNIST
If Sandy was a superstorm and Nemo was a double-whammy, what diabolical plans do God and nature have for Long
Island next?
If these weather calamities keep slamming us this way, what will it take to cause a stir next year?
Locusts?
There was once a time that storms of the century came once a century. How quaint and long ago that now feels! Blame global warming. Blame bad karma. Blame the hot air from too many pundits in Washington. Whoever and whatever we blame, this much has grown impossible to deny now: The weather is behaving in ways that are volatile even for volatile weather.
What was said about the weather in Texas now applies to Long Island. If you don’t like it, wait a minute — it’ll change.
Some winters, you hardly need a heavy coat. Other winters, you need an industrial-size snowplow. This one came in 
strong, got wimpy and then got tough all over again. What’s the pattern here?
Maybe there isn’t one, and that is new itself. “Say it ain’t snow,” people pleaded at the start of another crazy-weather week.
Well, it was snow all right and lots of it.
We’ll get through this. Of course we will. We always do. It’s just that hassles keep getting larger. The suffering gets deeper. And now the disasters are colliding into each other and themselves.
You have plans for the storm of the century next week?
STORM KINGS
1. Salesman with one generator left in stock
2. Big-hearted snow-blowing neighbor
3. Door-to-door shovel kid
4. Fearless food-delivery pro on a mountain bike
5. The sun
THE NEWS IN SONG
“Kicked by the wind, robbed by the sleet”
Little Feat
“Willin”
ASKED AND UNANSWERED
Did you scrape the snow back from the hydrants? Your local firefighters say, “Thanks.” . . . Lindsay’s back with her mom in Merrick? What could possibly go wrong? . . . Was Rep. Peter King caught off guard by Postal Service plans to drop Saturday delivery? He’s not claiming the notice was lost in the
mail? . . . Now that Barbie’s Malibu beach pad is being “sold” for $25 million, doesn’t Mattel’s glam girl need a Hamptons dream house? Are East End Realtors already calculating, “What’s 6 percent of 25 mil?” . . . Is a land bank the answer for Brookhaven’s languishing brownfields? Can someone please explain to the people of Brookhaven how land banks work? . . . Is it parking congestion — or some other worry — that has Mount Sinai neighbors so jumpy about Mohammed Sameen’s plan to turn his barn into a mosque? . . . Can we please stop saying Snowmageddon? That’s three-year-old slang by now . . . A three-hour shutdown of an undersea transmission line caused LI 
wholesale electricity prices to more than double — to $337 a megawatt-hour? Where would prices go if the 660-megawatt Neptune line was out for the weekend? . . . A frozen-shrimp-for-drugs ring? Is that why cops in Mastic Beach just arrested four Calverton housemates and the owner of Tai Yu Chinese? . . . What really made LIPA turn over blizzard response to National Grid? Are power authority execs about to get taunted at the next utility-industry convention: “Oh, really? You had to call in help on the Big One?”
LONG ISLAND OF THE WEEK
CHRIS FERRARO
High-school wrestling coaches don’t usually give much thought to skin infections. But West Islip’s Chris Ferraro had 
seen too many young athletes — his and others — contract ringworm, MRSA staph infections, impetigo, jock itch, mat herpes, athlete’s foot and various other nasty skin bugs. “I had to do something,” he said. “These kids were really suffering.” Teaming up with a chemist-friend who manufactured hospital cleansers, Chris created Titan Body Wash so his high-school wrestlers — and gym rats of any age — could protect themselves from the invading virus, bacteria and fungus army. The hospital-strength product has been an instant hit among the half-nelson set and is suddenly showing up in gyms, CrossFit boxes, MMA training facilities and extreme-sport stores across Long Island. Better safe than itchy.
E-mail ellis@henican.com
Follow him at twitter.com/henican
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