The National Weather Service holds Putnam at 90 percent rain today with gusts to 39 mph, 90 percent again tonight, and a full 100 percent Sunday, when the flood advisory runs to 2 PM. Monday keeps an 80 percent chance before the pattern finally exits. The dry part of the forecast sits past the weekend: Tuesday turns partly sunny near 70, and Wednesday and Thursday come in mostly sunny in the low-to-mid 70s.
Cold Spring spent Friday getting ready for the river. The village restricted parking on Market Street through the weekend to keep an evacuation route open if West Street floods, set up pumps on Main Street, cleared pinch points along Back Brook, and is offering sandbag material to residents at the rear of the Fair Street municipal lot. The worry is the Hudson over its banks at high tide, with a full moon this weekend pushing water higher. Hudson Valley Shakespeare canceled its Saturday matinee of Les Misérables and will decide on the 7 PM Saturday and 5 PM Sunday shows by noon each day, and the Garrison Fish and Game Club postponed its Kids' Fishing Derby.
As of Friday evening the Putnam County Pickle Fest was still listed for both days at the Patterson Recreation Center with no postponement notice, while Brewster Public Library announced it is closed today for the storm. Call ahead before heading out to anything indoors.
The questions Putnam searches this week, answer first, source after.
Is the Putnam County Pickle Fest canceled this weekend?
Not as of Friday evening. The organizers still list Saturday and Sunday, Sept 26 and 27, at the Patterson Recreation Center, and their site carried no postponement notice. The weekend sits inside a flood advisory that runs to Sunday at 2 PM, with a 90 percent rain chance today and 100 percent Sunday. Carmel's Parks and Recreation already postponed its Chamber Park concert that was set for tonight, so the town next door made the other call. If you are driving to Patterson, check the festival's site or social pages first, because weather calls can change overnight.
County Legislature chair Dan Birmingham proposed skipping county property taxes for 2027, spending part of the county's estimated $163 million in unrestricted reserves, and the Budget and Finance Committee turned it away on Sept 23. Two objections carried the room: New York City, the county's biggest taxpayer through the land it owns, could not legally be left out, and Rockland County tried a one-year tax holiday in 1987 and was eliminating 276 positions within four years. Legislator Amy Sayegh said she would back gradually lowering property taxes instead of pausing them for a year.
Did Sheriff Hess file an ethics complaint against Legislator Crowley?
He says he plans to. In a letter reported by the Substack Hudson Valley Digger and covered by The Current, Sheriff Brian Hess accuses Legislator Erin Crowley of pressuring him ahead of a disciplinary hearing for her husband, Deputy Kevin Osika, suspended since February. The catch is where the complaint would land: the county Board of Ethics has been inactive since a Sept 1 Legislature vote changed who appoints its five members, and County Executive Kevin Byrne has until Monday, Sept 28 to sign or veto that law. The Current has filed a records request for the letter itself.
Today brings wind as much as water: a north wind of 17 to 22 mph with gusts to 39, then rain overnight and a steady soak Sunday at 100 percent. Watch ponding on Routes 6, 22, 301 and 312, and give the low spots a wider gap than you would in dry weather. Monday's 80 percent chance tapers by evening, Tuesday turns partly sunny near 70, and Wednesday reaches 73 under mostly sunny skies.
Metro-North kept the regular weekend timetable on the Harlem Line out of Brewster and Southeast, and the alerts feed logged no advisory for the line overnight. If you are traveling Sunday, check mta.info first, since the coastal branches take the worst of the wind.
AI Corner: one plain-English AI thing, every issue
This week: catch a moved meeting date before you drive to it.
Carmel moved its Town Board voting meeting from Sept 30 to Sept 29, the kind of quiet calendar shift that is easy to miss. Paste a town calendar page into an AI chat and ask it to list every meeting with its date, time and place as plain rows. Keep that output, repeat the exercise next week, and ask what changed. It is a short check that catches the moved meeting before you are the one standing outside a locked building.
Reply with questions; they become future AI Corners.
