Everyone remember Hurricane Erin, right outside NYC the morning of 9/11? No?
Starting at bottom page 395, WHERE DID THE TOWERS GO? by Dr. Judy Wood. (Each statement in the following has citations I have left out for brevity, but which can be accessed in the actual textbook):
"Hurricane Erin ['HE'] was born on September 1, 2001, the fifth Atlantic storm of the 2001 season to be given a name and the first to reach hurricane strength. Merging with another storm system on September 17, Erin was also the longest-lived Atlantic storm of the 2001 season. Before that merger, however, starting back on September 7, Erin began a four-day march on a path taking her directly toward New York City. (See figure 420).
"By September 10, HE had become a Category 3 hurricane with wind speeds of 120 mph just as it passed Bermuda along its STRAIGHT [emphasis mine] path toward New York City. And yet we heard nothing about this storm. The World Trade Center Towers were built to withstand wind loads of up to 140 mph (225 km/hr.), the equivalent force of a Category 4 Hurricane AND ONLY 20 MPH MORE THAN THE WIND SPEED OF HE. The danger to tall buildings aside, even if HE changed course and failed to make landfall, the threat of flooding from storm surges was very real. Hurricane Ike (2008) made landfall in Texas as a Category 2 hurricane and had peak storm surge values of 15-20 feet. And yet, once again, we heard NOTHING about this storm.
"People remember 9/11 as geing one of the clearest days they had ever seen along the East Coast. The satellite that took the images shown in Figures 411 and 412 had a clear view of New York City and also had a clear view of HE. The outer bands of the storm reached over Cape Cod and the end of Long Island.
"Not even I knew there was a hurricane just outside of NYC on 9/11/01 until I discovered the fact while looking for weather-satellite images to study the rising dust plume from the destroyed WTC towers.
"In fact, as I was to discover, Erin came closest to NYC and also reached it's largest size on 9/11 itself. Interestingly, the National Hurricane Center projected Erin to be of stronger force than it was to project in the case of Katrina four years later. How curious it is, then, that this hurricane was not mentioned or shown by graphics on morning weather reports. Were meteorologists absolutely certain that this hurricane would make a sharp right-hand turn away from New York and head back out to sea before there was a major threat of storm surges?
"No, at least not according to the National Weather Service. Approximately 500 miles in diameter, HE was approximately the same size as the later Katrina, and yet the public was not widely alerted to it, none of the major morning news shows mentioning the storm.
"Still, Erin was the subject of extended study. The forecast was for Erin to be stronger than Katrina was later to be. In fact, HE actually did have more cyclonic energy than Hurricane Katrina, as measured by each storm's Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE).
"The storm was a tropical depression on the first of September, reached minimum pressure late on September 9 and maximum speed on September 10, and then it reached its maximum diameter on September 11. On the morning of September 11, the storm stopped at its closest approach to NYC, then in the afternoon it veered dramatically to the east."