FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
UPDATED: Media Briefing: FEMA & NOAA to discuss preparations for Hurricane Sandy and potential storm impacts
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and NOAA’s National Weather Service are actively tracking Hurricane Sandy as it continues moving northward over the eastern Atlantic. It is predicted to curve back toward land early next week. This large storm could bring a range of dangerous weather to a large part of the mid-Atlantic and Northeast. Experts from NOAA will provide an update on Sandy potential impacts and FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate will provide an overview of federal efforts underway to support state and local partners as they prepare for the storm.
What: Media teleconference on Sandy’s possible impacts and preparations
When: TODAY; 3:30 p.m. ET
Who: Craig Fugate, administrator, Federal Emergency Management Agency
Dr. Louis Uccellini, director, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Prediction
James Franklin, branch chief, NOAA’s National Hurricane Center
How: 1-888-790-3563, passcode: 5444021#
Resources:
NOAA’s National Hurricane Center: http://www.hurricanes.gov
NOAA’s National Weather Service: http://www.weather.gov
NOAA’s Environmental Visualization Lab: http://www.nnvl.noaa.gov/Default.php
Federal Emergency Management Agency: http://www.FEMA.gov
Preparedness Information: http://www.Ready.gov
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as I was saying, elsewhere…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/23/breaking-mann-has-filed-suit-against-nro/#comment-1123568
The Weather guessers are sure trying to whip Us all up in a Frenzy! Seems to be a lot of hype over a cat 1 storm. They are Hoping for a distraction before the election… I guess.!
FRANKENSTORM according to some.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-20091117
Is this storm (Sandy) worse than 1938 New England Hurricane?
This from Wikipedia
“1938 New England hurricane
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(Redirected from New England Hurricane of 1938)
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The New England Hurricane of 1938 (or Great New England Hurricane, Yankee Clipper, Long Island Express, or simply the Great Hurricane) was the first major hurricane to strike New England since 1869. The storm formed near the coast of Africa in September of the 1938 Atlantic hurricane season, becoming a Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale before making landfall as a Category 3 hurricane[1] on Long Island on September 21. The hurricane was estimated to have killed between 682 and 800 people,[2] damaged or destroyed over 57,000 homes, and caused property losses estimated at US$306 million ($4.7 Billion in 2012).[3] Even as late as 1951, damaged trees and buildings were still seen in the affected areas.[4] It remains the most powerful, costliest and deadliest hurricane in recent New England history, eclipsed in landfall intensity perhaps only by the Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635.”
New England Hurricane
Category 5 hurricane (SSHS)
Formed September 10, 1938
Dissipated September 22, 1938
Highest winds 1-minute sustained:
160 mph (260 km/h)
Lowest pressure 938 mbar (hPa); 27.7 inHg
Fatalities 682 to 800 direct
Damage $306 million (1938 USD)
Areas affected Bahamas, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, southwestern Quebec
Part of the 1938 Atlantic hurricane season
Last year I made back to America and was in D.C. for the earthquake aftermath and NYC for the tropical storm hit and then in Vermont for the flooding. What actions have been taken to improve civil infrastructure to better mitigate the havoc caused by periodic storms? I am not aware of any.
I saw a gang of the new Obummer Americorpse FEMA at the grocery store a little while ago, and was wondering why they hadn’t been shipped off to participate in the great Sandy coastal urban blight removal project.
Sounds like Joe Bastardi had it right.
In 2006 , I loudly proclaimed on national outlets that we were going back to the 1950s as far as the climate pattern went and that the patterns of the 50s which opened the east coast up for hurricanes,
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/07/17/joe-bastardi-show-parallels-to-the-1950s-and-tells-us-what-to-expect-looking-forward/
Which part of the eastern Atlantic?:
” …northward over the eastern Atlantic.”
I wouldn’t be too worried Sandy’s wind speed has been dropping all day. The NOAA is now showing sustained winds at just 75 mph, barely a Cat one storm. Is the Gulf stream warm enough to pump it back up again before Sandy gets to the coast?
I’m awaiting for better agreement among the models, as I would like to know if Sandy will be curling upwards to New England or COMING STRAIGHT AT MY HOUSE.
Okay, it does actually look like what’s happening is Divine Retribution against The Jersey Shore, but the backwash into Pennsylvania will still be considerable. Becoming collateral damage is highly annoying.
@John RT – yeah, that’s not too accurate a statement. I suppose they meant the Eastern Atlantic Coast, as I don’t think Spain, Portugal, or France are too worried about Sandy right now. 😉
Paul in Sweden says:
October 26, 2012 at 11:33 am
Last year I made back to America and was in D.C. for the earthquake aftermath and NYC for the tropical storm hit and then in Vermont for the flooding. What actions have been taken to improve civil infrastructure to better mitigate the havoc caused by periodic storms? I am not aware of any.
=============================================================
Paul, This is America we re-build giant cities below sea level in hurricane prone areas. We have done nothing to improve anything in any way.
Sadly. : (
Well, here’s your problem…
Sandy is supposed to move up the coast and then hook the the west to strike NJ. If you look at a map, the area that’s very likely to be hit is called “Sandy Hook”.
Coincidence? I think not…
Recently here we have had two major forest fires, wind gusts to 59 mph, and, at the house, 4 inches of snow. Earlier, local orchards were hit with hail that ruined the entire crop. Still, we are here and well. So pardon me for being a skeptic but Sandy looks like a big dog with a little bite.
Matt Bergin @ 12:19 asks about the warmth of the Gulf Stream.
http://www.erh.noaa.gov/box/maps/sst/2012102600_sst_AB.png
Or start here: http://www.erh.noaa.gov/box/seaSurfaceTemps.php
Next, where will Sandy go? Off the coast of VA by Monday morning?
And then NW across Delaware? Panic? Not yet!
Dennis Gaskill says:
October 26, 2012 at 11:25 am
It’s not just a cat 1 storm, it’s a cat 1 storm that is going to merge with a cold front that separates some much colder air from moist Atlantic air, with a strong jetstream included.
Also, keep in mind that Cat 1 refers to just the wind speed near the eye. It says nothing about whether the storm will stall inland. Even storms that never reached hurricane status have brought amazing flooding if they stall, and some of the storm tracks for this include stalling over highly populated areas. Think Agnes or even Irene in Vermont and upstate New York.
The front and jet stream are plenty adequate for making a small storm “bomb out”, including a tropical storm in the mix means you don’t have to apologize for the hype.
Think more along the line of “The Perfect Storm” in 1991 only much closer to the coast (and moving inland). OTOH, a meteorologist acquaintance on Facebook posted “Epic fail by the European model. (Apparently …nothing set in stone yet.). FYI… that means threat stays high north.” If that means the GFS model has the better solution, things become a lot worse for New England.
Another important feature is the negative NAO. That’s what’s forcing the storm inland, it’s also what brought big snowstorms to the mid Atlantic in the months after the Copenhagen COP.
Probably not a good storm to laugh at the hype about until it’s clear it’s heading out to sea after all, and if you live outside of the mid Atlantic or New England states, then just ignore the weather guessers.
The good news is it is headed toward the area with the highest levels of anthropogenic aerosols in North America, which are know to reduce hurricane intensity. This recent study suggests they could reduce hurricane intensity by as much as 8%.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00147.1
The Summary and Future Directions section has a good description of the processes involved.
Pat of Charleston says:
October 26, 2012 at 11:30 am
> Is this storm (Sandy) worse than 1938 New England Hurricane?
Wind-wise, no. IIRC, that was cat 3 at landfall. Also, there had been a lot of rain before the storm hit and the ground was saturated. That made it much easier to blown down trees, and the storm devastated New England forests.
It was a fast moving storm, did its damage and left.
Sandy may have notably strong winds inland, but I suspect duration and the tropical feed will make rain and flooding the major problems. Also, the full moon is this weekend, and if the storm surge extends across multiple high tides like the Blizzard of 1978 or the Great Atlantic Storm of 1962, there will be a lot of coastal damage despite just being cat 1.
“Special Weather Statements for Ontario”
http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/warnings/SWS_bulletins_e.html?prov=on
FrankenStorm! ………..Really?
Or not New England – the latest NHC track suggests clipping southern NJ, then into MD and PA.
We should call it the Election Day Storm.
HenryP says:
October 26, 2012 at 11:20 am
Henry links to an earlier post in which he equates cooling to the appearance of extreme weather. This needs to be well understood by sceptics. I have noted in previous comments, that we should be responding to this recent movement of the goal posts that says CAGW will result in increasing extreme weather events. Look back 60 years for intense tornado activity, big Texas droughts, fires, cold NW US with early snows, increased tropical storm activity etc. Yes there will be another bout of extreme weather in the offing – it may have already begun. Don’t fall into the trap of having alarmists be right for the wrong reasons and then have to react and produce the stuff from the 50s. These extremes mean cold is coming back. Pre-empt these charlatans. Get a study out there, get posts on the subject.
C’mon, folks. This is OBAMA-geddon!!!
Tithe to the Church of Climate Disruption, or ye shall be smitten mightely!
Dennis Gaskill says:
October 26, 2012 at 2:31 pm
> FrankenStorm! ………..Really?
Not a bad name for a storm made out of several smaller parts. It helps remind people like you 🙂 that the result will be more than just Sandy.
I should add to my comment about aerosols above that aerosols decrease hurricane intensity by increasing convection and precipitation in the outer bands.
So, more rain, but less intense winds near the center.
But because anthropogenic aerosols have been substantially reduced in recent decades, rainfall will be less than it would have been 30 or 40 years ago.
I’ll also note that last week Trenbeth referred to this effect, when he said (and I paraphrase) ‘We know human activities are making weather more severe. For example, Human effects produced an extra inch of rain from Hurricane Katrina and this extra rain may have caused the levees to breach.’
Trenbeth was deceptively implying anthropogenic global warming was the cause. So, expect more of this kind of (deceptive) spin.
Ric Werme said on October 26, 2012 at 2:33 pm:
Maybe God decided elections just weren’t cutting it, and decided to clean the corruption out of DC directly.
The 2012 Flushing of DC
Has a nice sound to it…
They’re besotted, and the response proves it:
“Blogoshpere”
<;P
It’s sort of a hurricane sandywich.
My local weather station says NINE straight days of rain, minimal winds and the obvious cause —
stalled storm, held together by a cold trough at the perfect spot to siphon moisture from the atlantic.
N.B. Canada
This will cut voter turnout in the NE.
Best of luck folks.
Paul in Sweden says:
October 26, 2012 at 11:33 am
“Last year I made back to America and was in D.C. for the earthquake aftermath and NYC for the tropical storm hit and then in Vermont for the flooding. What actions have been taken to improve civil infrastructure to better mitigate the havoc caused by periodic storms? I am not aware of any.”
All that… each time you visited the States? I know coorelation isn’t causation but maybe their action should be to stop letting you enter the States. [just kidding!]
Oh good, the NHC rainfall maps show New Hampshire now. Overall, doesn’t look too bad except for southeast MD with around 10″. A stretch from WV to northeast PA gets around 4″ (the mountains should get some wet snow, could be a problem), Scranton PA (for those of us who remember Agnes) gets about 2″ as do I in NH.
John F. Hultquist’s post of October 26, 2012 at 2:00 pm has the following link to Atlantic SSTs:
http://www.erh.noaa.gov/box/maps/sst/2012102600_sst_AB.png
That map is flat wrong. It would have one believe that the SST is near zero at the equator! The *pattern* of warming is plausible, with cold water at the North & South extremes, but it’s misregistered with the landmap and latitude grid. The map at http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/oisst/amsr-sst-bb.gif is somewhat out-of-date, but at least sensible.
Anthony, perhaps you could get your friends at NOAA to fix the ERH map.
As a postscript to my comment of 9:33 am, http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/oisst/navy-sst-bb.gif is a fairly current SST map.
Harold W says:
“That map is flat wrong. It would have one believe that the SST is near zero at the equator! ”
Umm…..did you ever hear about degrees Celsius?
tty –
Before resorting to snark, did you even click on the link to look at the map? And yes, it’s zero Celsius (=32 F) at the bottom of that map. I consider zero Celsius to be an implausible value for equatorial sea surface temperature, don’t you?
It’s just a simple mistake made on that graphic. It’ll be easy to fix.
The message that EVERYBODY should heed is the “Cry Wolf” syndrome.
Consider Darwin Australia 1974.
There had been previous years with dire warnings of impending destruction which came to nothing.
There were several incidents in late 1974 when warnings of impending doom turned into false alarm – And so for a few days leading into Christmas Eve 1974 the people of Darwin were again subjected to alarming forecasts which all promptly ignored because it seemed another BS news story – the difference this time Tracy formed and destroyed in less than a week.
Google Tracy 1974 Darwin to see a major small City blown away – major tornado type destruction.
How safe was CO2 in 1974 ?
Any time I read “FEMA gearing up”, my fight-or-flight reflex kicks in like an angry mule.
Here’s what gets me about the coverage of natural “disasters”:
“This could result in a devastating storm surge in the range of 5-10 feet, possibly flooding their subway system among other things.”
Sure, ‘devastating’ to a lot of man-made crap, but we all know that weather can be dangerous, we just choose to block it out (like those fools who keep rebuilding their luxury homes on sand bars off the Carolina coast). If you dig an enormous amount of artificial caves, and a hurricane comes along (as they have for millennia uncounted), you probably going to have some flooding issues, but it’s always stated in terms that make it sound unforeseen, unprecedented, and somehow unnatural. These people aren’t “friends of the planet”, they’re hopelessly myopic, self-absorbed control freaks.
Not everything that humans do matters to nature, not everything happens in nature hjas a human cause, and most importantly, not everything needs a human solution. If you really love the earth, learn to live with its many moods, cause even though you live together, she ain’t changing for nobody.
tty says:
October 27, 2012 at 12:53 pm
Umm, perhaps you should look at the map. The magic decoder key says blue is 0°C/32°F. While the numeric part is right, and perhaps the blue is right on some overlay map, the map really is trying to say the equatorial water is 0°C/32°F. In my estimation, Harold is right to question it. 🙂
Either that, or Hurricane Sandy is going to be cat 4-5 soon.
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kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
October 26, 2012 at 12:36 pm
I’m awaiting for better agreement among the models, as I would like to know if Sandy will be curling upwards to New England or COMING STRAIGHT AT MY HOUSE.
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Me too — well almost. Western MD is close to the center in the models. 4-5″ rain will turn my border stream into a raging river. Wet snow could blanket the highest mountains. Not looking forward to the power outages either.. 🙁
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Ric Werme says:
October 26, 2012 at 2:16 pm
OTOH, a meteorologist acquaintance on Facebook posted “Epic fail by the European model. (Apparently …nothing set in stone yet.). FYI… that means threat stays high north.” If that means the GFS model has the better solution, things become a lot worse for New England.
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The latest GFS model here:
http://vortex.plymouth.edu/psu_gfs-sfc_flan.html
shows it wobbling around the PA area for several days, tho it “rains out” fairly dramatically.