Sandy, thoughts after the fact

[Old Rocks]

Sheer size. Sandy coverd nine times as much area as did Katrina.

The European Weather Model predicted the unlikely synergy of the factors that created this super storm 4 or 5 days ahead of the storm.

 

[elvis]

I was told storms such as that one usually turn east before hitting New York, Philadelphia, etc. was there anything that caused this one to act differently?

 

[Old Rocks]

Yes, there was a blocking high over Greenland.

Yated Newspaper - What Turned Sandy Into The Perfect Storm


The second factor was Sandy’s track, which normally would have taken it out to sea, to blow itself out harmlessly in the North Atlantic. But Sandy’s normal path was blocked by a stationary high-pressure system west of Greenland. High pressure systems have clockwise winds, so Sandy, as it moved north, was hit head on by currents from the Greenland system blocking its natural path that would have taken it further east out to sea.



This steered Sandy into the jet stream, a powerful upper atmosphere wind current which was also out of its normal position. The jet stream turned the storm to the northwest, towards the New Jersey coast. At that point, Sandy met up with a huge wave of cold air moving south from Canada and eastward across the United States. When the two systems met, the cold wave transferred its energy to the hurricane, creating a superstorm.



Sandy actually intensified as it approached the Jersey coast, with sustained winds climbing from 75 to 85 mph. Meteorologists measure the power of storms by the barometric pressure at their centers. The lower the pressure, the more powerful the storm. When Sandy came ashore in Jersey on Monday, it set a new record for low barometric pressure for any storm making landfall so far north along the Atlantic Coast.

 

[whitehall]

"Never let a crisis go to waste"....Rahm Emanuel

 

[Old Rocks]

"Never let a crisis go to waste"....Rahm Emanuel

And your meaning for that comment is?