Sunday, October 28, 2012

Oh, dear

SANDY AND STORM SURGE POSE 'WORST CASE SCENARIO'

KENSINGTON, Md. (AP) -- The projected storm surge from Hurricane Sandy is a "worst case scenario" with devastating waves and tides predicted for the highly populated New York City metro area, government forecasters said Sunday.
The more they observe it, the more the experts worry about the water - which usually kills and does more damage than winds in hurricanes.
In this case, seas will be amped up by giant waves and full-moon-powered high tides. That will combine with drenching rains, triggering inland flooding as the hurricane merges with a winter storm system that will worsen it and hold it in place for days.
Louis Uccellini, environmental prediction chief for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told The Associated Press that given Sandy's due east-to-west track into New Jersey, that puts the worst of the storm surge just north in New York City, Long Island and northern New Jersey. "Yes, this is the worst case scenario," he said.
...
National Hurricane Center Director Rick Knabb said Hurricane Sandy's size means some coastal parts of New York and New Jersey may see water rise from 6 to 11 feet from surge and waves. The rest of the coast north of Virginia can expect 4 to 8 feet of surge. The full moon Monday will add 2 to 3 inches to the storm surge in New York, Masters said. "If the forecasts hold true in terms of the amount of rainfall and the amount of coastal flooding, that's going to be what drives up the losses and that's what's going to hurt," said Susan Cutter, director of the hazards and vulnerability research institute at the University of South Carolina.
...
A NOAA map of inland and coastal flood watches covers practically the entire Northeast: all of Maryland, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut; most of Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts and Vermont, and parts of northeastern Ohio, eastern Virginia, North Carolina, and western New Hampshire. Along the mid-Atlantic coast, storm surge is already starting to build, Uccellini said. NOAA's Coastal Services Center chief Margaret Davidson said to expect "bodacious impacts" from both surge and inland flooding.
{Is that a technical term?} ...
The storm, which threatens roughly 50 million in the eastern third of the country, began as three systems. Two of those - an Arctic blast from the north and a normal winter storm front with a low-pressure trough- have combined. Hurricane Sandy will meld with those once it comes ashore, creating a hybrid storm with some of the nastier characteristics of a hurricane and a nor'easter, experts have said.

2 comments:

Sailorcurt said...

These people tend to get more attention for their breathless predictions of disaster and doom than over whether they were right or not.

They've cried "wolf" way too often for me to take them seriously.

That's not to say that I don't believe this is a bad storm and is going to do a lot of damage and cause a lot of harm. It is and it will.

But the ridiculous "storm of the century" claims get a little old after the fifteenth or sixteenth such prediction.

Drang said...

It's possible that the sensationalism may be required to shake the sheeple out of their soma stupor.

Ghu knows, they'd never stoop to such simply to boost ratings...