Duck and cover = Perfect Storm a comin'

[macdoc]

Early Worries That Hurricane Sandy Could Be a ‘Perfect Storm

Hurricane Sandy, which on Thursday was barreling through the Bahamas as a Category 2 storm, may be taking aim at the northeastern United States and could make landfall along the Atlantic coast early next week. If so, forecasters say, the storm could become, to use a technical term from meteorology, a whopper.

“It really could be an extremely significant, historic storm,” said Brian McNoldy, a senior research associate at the University of Miami, explaining that conditions are similar to those that created the famous “perfect storm” of 1991.

Hurricane prediction is, of course, an iffy business, said Dennis Feltgen, a meteorologist and spokesman for the National Hurricane Center, who noted that the storm was still days from the East Coast and could weaken drastically or even shift course and race off into the Atlantic.

The chain of events that would make Hurricane Sandy develop into a grave threat to the coast involves a storm system known as a midlatitude trough that is moving across the country from the west. If the systems meet up, as many computer models predict, the storm over land could draw the hurricane in.

“Now you’ve got this giant storm complex with a lot of energy,” Mr. Feltgen said. The combined systems could produce high winds, heavy rains and storm surges that would cause extensive damage.

New York was beginning to prepare for trouble. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg told reporters that the city activated its coastal storm plan on Thursday morning and that it had already opened its Office of Emergency Management situation room. He also said that important city agencies had been meeting regularly and that the storm was discussed at Thursday’s senior staff meeting, “just to make sure that everybody knows they should, you know, start getting out the plans, which we’ve worked on very hard.”

Joseph J. Lhota, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said in a radio interview on Thursday that the agency was discussing contingency plans to move buses to higher ground if necessary. Last year, the authority carried out an unprecedented shutdown of the entire subway system ahead of Tropical Storm Irene.

“I don’t think we’re looking at anything like that for what’s happening next week,” Mr. Lhota said.

Such storm combinations have happened before: one that occurred 21 years ago developed into what is now known as the “perfect storm” off the coast of New England. That disaster was memorialized in a 1997 book and a 2000 movie by the same name.

“Essentially, all of the major models are now showing some form of phasing event similar to the perfect storm occurring sometime next week,” said William A. Komaromi, a graduate student at the University of Miami who posted an essay online on Thursday comparing Hurricane Sandy to the 1991 event.

Mr. Feltgen said that “everybody along the U.S. East Coast needs to be paying attention to this right now,” though he added that “we’re not telling people to rush to the grocery stores.” It is a time, he suggested, for watchful waiting. “Let’s not go overboard with this thing,” he said, “but you should at least start becoming aware of it.”

Mr. McNoldy said, “You want to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.” Even if the storm’s wind power weakens substantially, as Hurricane Irene showed, “rainfall can still be extremely high.” Mr. McNoldy’s posts on Twitter about Hurricane Sandy now bear the label “frankenstorm.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/us/ea ... nted=print

[hadespussercats]

Ayuh. Stahm's comin'.

[SteveB]

Ayuh. Stahm's comin'.

Pstt you live in the East Coast.

[FBM]

You guys get all the good storms.

[orpheus]

I hope it doesn't show up in New York early. This weekend is our anniversary, and I've got a "perfect storm" of my own planned. Don't need no interference.

[Ian]

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Cool, we need the rain.

[Ian]

Cool, we need the rain.

Missouri won't get squat. If you want rain, pack up and move next door to Coito down in Florida.

[Santa_Claus]

God is angry!

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Cool, we need the rain.

Missouri won't get squat. If you want rain, pack up and move next door to Coito down in Florida.

I pardon your beg, but one time Chicago had flooding from a hissycane that made landfall at Nawlins.

[Ian]

That hissycane came straight up from the Gulf. This time it'll brush the coast. Even if it heads due west, there'll be those pesky Appalachian mountains in the way.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

That hissycane came straight up from the Gulf. This time it'll brush the coast. Even if it heads due west, there'll be those pesky Appalachian mountains in the way.

HAARP will redirect it to the Gulf Coast to sweep all of BP's oil under the rug. Obama has his orders from the Council on Foreign Relations, an Illuminati front organization staffed by Reptilians from Nibiru.*


*What did I leave out?

[Ian]

Your information is inaccurate. All those guys are too busy preparing for a satellite-created earthquake in Missouri.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Your information is inaccurate. All those guys are too busy preparing for a satellite-created earthquake in Missouri.

And I got front-row seats!

[Ian]

If Sandy Becomes 'Frankenstorm,' It Could Be Worst In A Century
"We're not trying to hype it," National Weather Service meterologist Paul Kocin tells Bloomberg News. "What we're seeing in some of our models is a storm at an intensity that we have not seen in this part of the country in the past century."

So get ready, Mid-Atlantic states, the Northeast and New England: Hurricane Sandy, which has already caused at least 21 deaths in the Caribbean, is still on track to turn toward you on Monday. And if that happens, it will meet up with a winter storm coming from the West and cold air coming down from Canada to become what could be a horrible "Frankenstorm" (Halloween is Wednesday).

Oh, and there's also a full moon on Monday. As that affects tides, the concern about storm surges along coastal areas grows.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is warning folks from Florida to New England to "update your family communication plans, check your supplies, and stay informed."

The storm that Kocin and some other meteorologists are saying this could rival was a 1938 hurricane that hit Long Island and New England hard — more than 500 people were killed, Bloomberg notes.

At 5 a.m. ET today, Sandy was about 485 miles southeast of Charleston, S.C. The National Hurricane Center's latest "5-day forecast cone" shows Sandy grazing the coast of North Carolina around 2 a.m. ET on Monday, then turning to the northwest and making landfall around Delaware at 2 a.m. ET on Tuesday. It would then head across the Mid-Atlantic and toward the Great Lakes.

Update at noon ET. The Storm Could "Explode":

The warnings coming from weather experts are intense, to say the least. The Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang blog has a discussion of how low the pressure could go as Sandy moves inland — bringing with it very strong winds. And when it meets up with the other systems, watch out:

"The clash of the cold blast from the continental U.S. and the massive surge of warm, moist air from Hurricane Sandy will cause the storm to explode and the pressure to crash." Many of the nearly 67 million people living in the superstorm's path "will likely contend with tropical storm force winds — 40-60 mph, if not somewhat greater."

And Capital Weather Gang points to this, from a blog written by AccuWeather Senior Vice President Mike Smith:


"A very prominent and respected National Weather Service meteorologist wrote on Facebook last night, 'I've never seen anything like this and I'm at a loss for expletives to describe what this storm could do.' "
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/201 ... n=20121026

I just came back from the grocery store where I stocked up on canned food, spare batteries, water, and Halloween candy.
Full tank of propane ready to go on the grill, plenty of gas in the car, stockpiling ice for the cooler... bring it on, Sandy.