Today in your Trail Mix: gale force winds!
Hurricane Irene is causing quite a stir.
Figuring out who's right about how much gas is in the Marcellus Shale.
Farm politics at the state fair.
Plus, the comptroller gives away giant checks.
Natural disasters
Just when you'd gotten your balance back after the earthquake, here comes the hurricane!
Brian Nearing at the Times Union helps you get your sea legs with a report about meteorologists looking to Hurricane Floyd, to see how Irene might affect the Albany area.
The governor canceled a fundraiser so he could track the storm (Jimmy Vielkind, Capitol Confidential).
Utilities are bringing in extra workers to help out with downed lines and tree limbs (Larry Rulison, Times Union).
NYC has released a map of areas where evacuation is recommended (though at this writing NYC.gov appears to be down). You can also just punch in your street address to see if you should high tail it out of there. And Gawker has a tongue-in-cheek guide to hurricane preparedness for New Yorkers - the hurricane punch sounds truly foul (Brian Moylan).
Feeling nostalgic for the quake now? All Over Albany has a map of quakes since the one earlier this week.
Natural gas
Remember earlier this week when one federal agency was like "there's a lot more gas in the Marcellus Shale than we thought!" But then that number was still a lot smaller than the number from /another/ federal agency? The Innovation Trail's Emma Jacobs helps you sort it out.
The governor was followed around the state fair by protestors urging him to ban fracking (Jimmy Vielkind, Capitol Confidential).
Broome County is suing to find out the details of a gas lease that Binghamton University has (Steve Reilly, Press & Sun-Bulletin).
Natural gas advocacy organization IOGA is releasing videos meant to persuade residents that drilling is safe and beneficial. Here's the first one:
Agriculture
The president of the Farm Bureau talked politics at the state fair, with Capital Tonight (Michael Johnson, State of Politics/Capital Tonight).
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has been meeting with farmers to talk about what they want from the federal farm bill (Diana Louise Carter, Democrat and Chronicle).
Business and money
First Niagara continues its expansion spree - into hockey. The firm is taking over naming rights for the former HSBC Arena, after also agreeing to take over the bank's upstate branches (John Vogl, Buffalo News).
GE has nabbed a $1.35 million federal grant to look at carbon capture at its Niskayuna plant (Larry Rulison, The Buzz).
Rochester-area incomes jumped 3 percent between 2009 and 2010 according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (Velvet Spicer, Rochester Business Journal).
The comptroller is still trying to get people to search for their unclaimed funds, giving away giant checks to staffers on Good Morning America (Michael Johnson, State of Politics).
Politics
The first Finger Lakes public forums for the regional economic council are next week (Thomas Adams, Rochester Business Journal).
At Capital New York, Jimmy Vielkind explores the "intensely governed" Village of Green Island, and whether or not consolidation would yield savings.
State of Politics has a slideshow of the governor's visit to the fair.
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