IBT, By Brett Forman, October 27
Tropical Storm Sandy regained hurricane-force winds on Saturday as it headed for the U.S. northeast, where for preparations continue for one of the worst storms in decades along the U.S. East Coast.
Sandy had been downgraded to tropical storm status early Saturday morning, but the National Hurricane Center reported that U.S. Air Force aircraft recorded hurricane-force winds only a couple of hours later.
A state of emergency was declared in Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland and Washington, D.C.. and New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a press conference that the city may have to evacuate up to 375,000 people before Sandy makes landfall.
Hurricane Sandy Predicted To Resemble 1991 ‘Perfect Storm’
IBT, By Roxanne Palmer | October 26
Could Hurricane Sandy spawn a perfect storm?
At 11 a.m. Eastern time on Friday, Sandy, which is currently a Category 1 hurricane, was passing over the Abaco Islands in the northern Bahamas. At least 15 people have died in the storm thus far, with 11 casualties in Cuba. And if meterologists’ predictions are correct, Sandy is just warming up — long after most believed that hurricane season was behind us.
“This is a beyond-strange situation,” Weather Channel hurricane specialist Bryan Norcross wrote in a blog post at Weather Underground on Friday. “It’s unprecedented and bizarre.”
Hurricanes usually head out to sea this time of year – it’s pretty much unheard of for an October tropical system to head left and slam into the Northeastern coast, according to Norcross. But that’s what might happen.
Most reliable computer forecast models are predicting that Sandy’s impact will be historic. The hurricane is in the right spot to be sucked back inland by a storm system called a midlatitude trough, which is rolling in from the west. (While Sandy’s companion storm is still unnamed, perhaps ‘Danny’ is appropriate?)
New York City Considering Evacuations As Hurricane Sandy Strengthens
IBT, By Eric Brown, October 27
As Hurricane Sandy approaches New York City, officials have been discussing plans to evacuate residents in low-lying areas and possibly shut down the city’s subway system for fear of flooding.
Hurricane Sandy is likely to merge with two other intense weather patterns to create a “Frankenstorm” that is expected make landfall in the New York City metropolitan area early Tuesday morning. New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo has declared a statewide state of emergency.
Currently, roughly 375,000 New Yorkers live in low-lying areas that would have to be evacuated in the case of a severe hurricane. Mayor Bloomberg has not yet announced whether or not residents in these areas would need to evacuate.
“This is a very dangerous storm,” Bloomberg said Friday at a news conference in City Hall. “Hopefully, tomorrow night we’ll have better news that it’s likely to go somewhere else, but even then, it could change at the last minute, because that’s the way the weather is.”
At least 21 dead in Cuba, Haiti and Jamaica; mid-Atlantic states watch Hurricane Sandy nervously
The Miami Herald, By Curtis Morgan, Mimi Whitefield & Jacqueline Charles, October 26
Miami – After slamming eastern Cuba early Thursday as a bigger, stronger and deadlier storm than expected, Hurricane Sandy churned toward what could be a wicked Halloween eve visit to the northeastern United States from a massive hybrid weather system quickly dubbed “Franken-storm.”
Sandy was weakening but still expected to generate at least one more day of nasty weather across South Florida, with storms and tropical storm-force gusts brushing the coast Friday – conditions bad enough for many schools in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties to cancel classes. (Friday was already a teacher work-day in Dade and Broward public schools.)
But the state will likely escape mostly unscathed from a hurricane that left a growing death toll and a trail of collapsed buildings and bridges, shredded roofs, ruined crops and flooded hospitals across three Caribbean countries and the Bahamas. The death count leapt to 21 on Thursday – one in Jamaica, 11 in Cuba, and nine in Haiti, which endured another day of nonstop rain, flooding and mudslides.
US superstorm threat launches mass evacuations
AP, October 28
Ship Bottom, NH. — Forget distinctions like tropical storm or hurricane. Don’t get fixated on a particular track. Wherever it hits, the rare behemoth storm inexorably gathering in the eastern U.S. will afflict a third of the country with sheets of rain, high winds and heavy snow, say officials who warned millions in coastal areas to get out of the way.
“We’re looking at impact of greater than 50 to 60 million people,” said Louis Uccellini, head of environmental prediction for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
As Hurricane Sandy barreled north from the Caribbean — where it left nearly five dozen dead — to meet two other powerful winter storms, experts said it didn’t matter how strong the storm was when it hit land: The rare hybrid storm that follows will cause havoc over 800 miles from the East Coast to the Great Lakes.
“This is not a coastal threat alone,” said Craig Fugate, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “This is a very large area.”
Christy Orders New Jersey’s Barrier Islands, Casinos Evacuated
Bloomberg, By Terrence Dopp & Freeman Klopott, October 28
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie declared a state of emergency yesterday, as Hurricane Sandy barreled toward the U.S. East Coast and appeared headed to strike land near Delaware Bay.
Christie said the state is prepared for hurricane-force winds along portions of New Jersey’s Atlantic Ocean coastline. Delaware Bay, a body of water, separates Delaware from the southern coastline of New Jersey.
The governor ordered the mandatory evacuation of all the state’s barrier islands south of Sandy Hook and the closing of the state’s 12 casinos, both at 4 p.m. today. In New York City, authorities began preparing a schedule for a shutdown of the city’s subway, bus and commuter-train systems.
“Everyone’s saying, ‘This is crap, it isn’t going to happen — the weathermen always get it wrong, so I’m just going to hang out here,’” Christie told reporters yesterday in the coastal community of Middletown, in central New Jersey. “Please don’t, OK? We have to be prepared for the worst here.”
Hurricane Sandy tracked by Google
BBC, By Zoe Kleinman, October 29
Google has launched interactive maps to track the path of Hurricane Sandy and provide localised support information as it approaches the US east coast.
A New York map includes the locations of evacuation centres and emergency shelters set up by the Red Cross.
[...]
The “crisis maps” are using data from the US Naval Research Laboratory, the National Hurricane Center, US weather website weather.com and the US Geological Survey.
“The Google crisis response team has assembled a Hurricane Sandy map to help you track the storm’s progress and provide updated emergency information,” wrote Google software engineer Ka-Phing Yee on the firm’s blog.
Google Crisis Map.