Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
As at 2 PM Pacific time, here’s the current position of Sandy and the projected path.
SOURCE: National Data Buoy Center
I had said a couple of days ago, when Sandy was a hurricane, that it would not be a hurricane when it hit the coast. How did that go?
Well, as of the time that this location and projection of the path was done, the NDBC has shown all the nearest stations. Not one of the actual observations is showing sustained winds over 50 knots, and that’s a long ways from the 72 63 knots that marks a hurricane.
Please note that the big damage from such storms is the flooding, so I am not minimizing the likely extent of the damage. It will be widespread. However … not a hurricane.
w.
Addition by Anthony:
Harold Ambler has a photo of storm surge in Rhode Island here
Flooding in the subway in Newark, NJ (via FirstHand Weather on Facebook)
Water level in Battery Park has come down a couple feet from its peak and is still receding … high tide occurs at 12:10 AM EDT … on-site report per CH 4 reporter in NYC …
Old record in 1821 beat by a couple feet, new record now 13.8 ft …
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Never post an I told you so when people are suffering.
Over time as oceans warm and air temperatures rise these kinds of major weather events will be more common. Its all about the shape of the curves on the Psychrometric chart, as air gets warmer, it’s ability to absorb water increases at an increasing rate.
The weather channel reports are pathetic: the reporter from Newburyport had his feet barely covered by water around a wharf surge of debris. It was as if he reported a tsunami…
In Battery Park water receeds and the reporter estimates the wind at 70mph… just holding her baseball cap…
The comment are contradictory: one reporter says water level receeding quickly… meanwhile the main anchor talks about slow recess of water…
Let’s not forget that The Weather Channel is a Rothschild property
http://zen-haven.com/rothschilds-weather-channel-buys-weather-underground/
And is serving their global warming alarmism…
Meanwhile on Yahoo:
http://news.yahoo.com/sandy-unlikely-damage-us-economy-analysts-164120917–finance.html
Yes the storm surge and tides contributed to strong flooding, winds were strong but Frankenstorm is yet another staging of meteo for political purpose.
Let’s wait and see how Atlantic City and area did tomorrow morning … getting people OUT of harm’s way is part of planning and preparation in events like this, so lives DO NOT require police and fire responders when water levels climb (where do you seek shelter when your house floods and the ‘dry’ spot is the roof BUT the storm is still raging? One must avoid the physical conditions that might cause one to perish from ‘exposure’ or hypothermia) …
As with Katrina, the big problem is the destruction the storm reeks on infrastructure in ‘slow motion’ (i.e. storm surge/flooding and continued hours of wind damage) which works to erode formerly functioning (1) potable water (purification and pumping) systems, (2) electric switching yards, (3) distribution systems in the neighborhoods and (4) and up and down the main drags (streets), and (5) operating/operating of waster-water (sewage) systems for quite literally ***MILLIONS**** of people … at the moment, in five of the states affected 4 *million* customers show to be without power; note: 1 ‘customer’ may represent an entire family or a single person, I don’t know if that includes businesses or not.
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Ric Werme says:
October 29, 2012 at 7:25 pm
“it’s blowing like crazy up here in central New Hampshire. Heck, my pressure is now 29.27″ (991 mb).”
Ric – where are you?? I’m in the upper valley and the wind is indeed blowing but NOT like crazy! Maximum gusts at the local airport haven’t exceeded 32 mph:
http://www.intellicast.com/Local/Observation.aspx?location=USNH0123
Irene was worse!
JM Sute, may I suggest this link:
http://www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/BadMeteorology.html
Keep playing the guitar and enjoy the read.
Thanks, Willis. A voice for sanity!
Theo Goodwin … I don’t know what inspires your need to downplay this whole thing, but this is a serious piece of weather and the MSM rightly (this time) have told it how it is. It was always going to downgrade once it hit landfall. That’s how hurricanes work.
So far 10 dead and rising. 3 million people without power and a record 4 metre storm surge is battering NY….and this is just the start.
Perhaps it would be prudent for you to consider resigning your comments until the full scale of the damage is known.
[snip – nothing to do with hurricane Sandy – way off topic -mod]
“Old record in 1821 beat by a couple feet, new record now 13.8 ft …”
Almost 200 years to beat that record… and NYC now is no NYC 1821…
_Jim says:
October 29, 2012 at 7:42 pm
“Old record in 1821 beat by a couple feet, new record now 13.8 ft …”
There are pictures of water flowing into Ground Zero, the 9/11 memorial. Isn’t that rain water? It seems to be that the path from the harbor to the memorial is up quite a slope, one that I recall is considerably more than 13 feet. (After topping the slope, the water runs down into the memorial.)
The same for Wall Street. The flooding in the streets must be from rain water. Wall Street is way farther up the hill beyond the memorial.
Psychometric chart? OK, an MSM hurricane forecaster.
They are calling it Superstorm instead of hurricane.
Theo Goodwin says:
October 29, 2012 at 7:40 pm
I think people have gotten better at getting boats out of the way. (The Bounty replica excepted.) Comes from better satellite imagery and track forecasts so that pilots can figure out a safe heading.
Despite the better communications we have now, I suspect any areas damaged like that may not have good coverage until the storm passes. For example, http://www.shipbottomfireco.com/ hasn’t updated their page in at least 8 hours, I was hoping they would have pre-sunset photos.
Don’t forget Camille was Cat 5….
Mr Lynn says:
October 29, 2012 at 7:18 pm
You tell a lovely store and paint a vivid picture. I have been in your situation but in central Florida. Do not notify the authorities. They will turn the power off. Maybe try to hide the tree until the repair crews show up.
pokerguy says: Don’t see the purpose of this post except for self-aggrandizement. Whatever it’s precise nature on impact, it was and still remains, a terribly destructive storm. And not just flooding. Wind a major factor as well.
You know, its the global warming alarmism that fosters posts like this. Everything everything is blamed on global warming and for rational people, it gets tedious. Claims of “unprecedented storm due to warmer water and rising sea levels, all because of climate change.” If you poke around in the history here at WUWT and look at some recent (within the last 3 months) topics, you can find many references to weather being LESS, not more severe at this time. Everytime the weather sneezes is not a reason to exaggerate in order to support a failing alarmism agenda. So posts like this help me maintain perspective when the media doesn’t. Not saying the flooding won’t be a real problem, but weather has caused problems for humans since the beginning. So why is a great big honking storm nothing but normal?
Pokerguy, I like hearing that this is a “normal” big honking storm that will cause normal and predicatble damage as has been the case forever and certainly nothing new. I enjoy these types of posts for my sanity.
My only experience of this storm was when it was 200 miles from the NE coast of Florida. It was annoying as I was forced to spend my time searching for shells rather than playing in the water. There were some impressive waves even at low tide and the beach was basically inaccessible at high tide unless one was prepared to dodge large logs which came up with the extreme waves and storm surge.
What I’ve noticed about weather reporting now is that it has become far too driven by ideology. Rather than just report facts, it seems necessary to report worst case scenarios. I have to admit that the Florida TV reporting, while alarmist, didn’t mention anything about CAGW. Given that Sandy was 200 miles away from me at its closes approach, it made me wonder why so much was made of the mere 40 mph winds experienced locally? There was a local weather underground weather station and the very low barometric pressume recorded as Sandy passed made me regret that I’d chosen not to pack along a barometer with a USB interface for this trip.
Unless it affects my ability to book a flight back to Kamloops, I’d have to consider this hurricane to be an enhancement of my vacation rather than a negative effect. Noticed some very interesting wind effects on sorting of sand grains by size and weight and the shells dredged up by the high seas were definitely of greater variety than what I’m used to. Also, got into studying seeds carried by ocean currents given the large number of washed up tropical seeds that were present on the beach over the last few days.
However, had the storm headed west instead of north, I probably wouldn’t be posting this.
Ric Werme says:
October 29, 2012 at 8:24 pm
My argument is with the MSM. They hyped it as if it were Camille. CBS and others published that it had tropical storm force wind 465 miles from the center. Preposterous. The totality of their hype was Preposterous. They should have told the truth that it would become a tropical storm at landfall or soon after. Tropical storms push around some water and they are excellent at knocking down lots of trees that are more than seventy years old. That causes power outages. But none of that takes place at the level of a hurricane. Tropical storms are tree killers. Hurricanes kill trees, buildings, streets, and everything.
Four NY hospitals being evacuated because their backup power failed/is failing, including NICU units. 5′ water in lower Manhattan. Alert issued for Oyster Bay Nuclear Facility. I don’t think it matters what the heck you call this storm, it is the damage that is the problem not the official designation.
Four NY hospitals being evacuated as their backup generators are failing or have failed, including NICU units and one hospital on fire that cannot be reached due to flooding. Does it really matter what the heck you call this storm?
The remnants of Sandy seem to be left spinning just a bit east of D.C.
This link live… it won’t last long…
http://radar.weather.gov/radar.php?rid=DOX&product=NCR&overlay=11101111&loop=yes
I’m starting to agree with the “MSM beat-up” claims.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/linkableblob/4341760/data/infographic-how-hurricane-sandy-compares-irene-katrina-yasi-data.png
Yes it’s a bad storm, but it’s not really a BAD storm.
[snip – flame bait – mod]
Mitsouko says:
October 29, 2012 at 9:06 pm
Of course bad things happened because of the storm. But they are the kinds of bad things that happen in a tropical storm. At no time did the MSM say (or admit) that Sandy would be something like a tropical storm at landfall. They talked constantly about storm surge that could be expected from hurricane Sandy. As I said above, a dangerous storm surge is a tidal surge and the ocean comes on land for a while. That simply did not happen.
My argument is with the MSM. I am not calling New Yorkers cry babies. Having trees knocked down by a tropical storm and losing power for a week or two is immensely painful but it is not the kind of pain that the MSM led us to expect. They led us to expect a hurricane pushing a true tidal surge.