Frankenstorm: Why Hurricane Sandy Will Be Historic
The name may be funny—Frankenstorm—but be advised: Hurricane Sandy is no joke. Over the weekend meteorologists were running out of frightening things to say about Sandy, which by the time it makes landfall on Monday evening—most likely in New Jersey—will almost certainly be the largest storm to ever hit the East Coast, with a reach that extends some 450 miles beyond its core. Sandy truly will be the perfect storm—not
just because a hurricane is meeting a northern blockage that will fuel
its strength as it hits land as well as another western storm system,
but because Sandy is set to strike the richest and most populated part
of the U.S. “We’re looking at impact of greater than 50 to 60 million
people,” said Louis Uccellini,
head of environmental prediction for the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). A drone strike couldn’t be better
targeted to cause maximum damage than this storm.
(MORE: So You’re About to Get Hit By a Hurricane)
It’s not so much that Sandy is an incredibly strong storm, with winds at about 75 mph. NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division put the destructive power of
Sandy’s winds at a modest 2.6 on a scale of 0 to 6. The real danger
comes from the potentially huge storm surges the hurricane could cause
along coastal areas. NOAA put the storm surge threat from Sandy at 5.7 on that 6 point scale—greater than any hurricane observed between 1969 and 2005, including Category 5 storms
like Katrina and Andrew. NOAA’s National Hurricane Center says that
“life-threatening storm surge flooding” is expected along the
mid-Atlantic coast.
For coastal cities, such surges—amplified by the fact that Sandy will
be hitting during high tide—could prove disastrous. Storm surges are
expected to reach 4 to 8 ft., if not higher, as Sandy pushes vast
amounts of ocean water onto the land. In and around New York City, it could be worse, with storm surges predicted to reach as high as 11 ft.—nearly a record—in
northern New Jersey and Long Island Sound. Preliminary forecasts
suggest that lower Manhattan could experience its highest waters since at least 1851.
That’s why Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Sunday morning that the
city would evacuate low-lying areas, meaning that some 370,000 people—a
population equal to that of Minneapolis—may need to move. The city also
shut down its subway, bus and commuter rail services, beginning at 7 PM
on Sunday. (Buses were shut down two hours later.) That decision—also taken when Irene neared New York
last year—was made to try to reduce the risk of damage to subway
equipment in tunnels, which could flood depending on the extent of the
surge. “I give a 50% chance that Sandy’s storm surge will end up
flooding a portion of New York’s subway system,” wrote Jeff Masters of the Weather Underground’s Wunderblog.
(MORE: ‘Frankenstorm’: Worse Than Sum of Its Parts)
It’s not clear when New York’s subway service will be restored, but
if the flooding is severe, it might be a long, long time. New York just
barely avoided disaster during Irene in 2011—Klaus Jacob, a research
scientist at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, noted last year
that if the storm surge had been just 1 ft. higher, subway tunnels
under the Harlem and East River would have been unusable for a month, at
an economic cost of $55 billion. The threat to the subways is another
reminder that the economic cost of a storm has as much to do with where
it hits as it does with how strong the hurricane is in the first place.
And make no mistake: Sandy is a freak. While it’s not unheard of for
hurricanes to form this late in the year—the actual Atlantic hurricane
season extends another month—storms will usually be pulled out to sea by
a semi-permanent low-pressure system near Iceland. But that’s not what
happened with Sandy, as meterologist Eric Holthaus points out:
The coincidence of that strong of a high pressure “block”
being in place just when a hurricane is passing by — in and of itself a
very rare occurrence — is just mind bogglingly rare. It’s the kind of
stuff that’s important enough to rewrite meteorological textbooks. The
result: Instead of heading out to sea Sandy’s full force will be turned
back against the grain and directed squarely at the East Coast.
(MORE: After Levee Blast, More Rough Water Ahead)
The sheer oddness of Sandy’s arrival begs the obvious question: Is climate change involved here? Many environmentalists certainly think so. But scientists are always reluctant
to link climate change to any specific weather event, and the impact of
warming on hurricanes have proved particularly difficult to untangle.
The last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report
noted that scientists have “low confidence” in long-term increases in
tropical cyclone activity due to man-made warming. It’s true that
warming does increase the amount of moisture in the air, which can make
storms rainier—just as we saw with Irene last year, and potentially with
Sandy now. But don’t be fooled by cautious scientists—we can expect
that global warming will likely bring about stronger and potentially
more destructive storms and other natural disasters like Sandy.
What we know is that, climate change or not, big storms will
happen—and if they hit populated areas, they will cause damage. The
immediate challenge is to prepare for those disasters, and in the
future, build societies and infrastructure that can be resilient to the
sort of catastrophes that we know will continue to unfold in the future.
Sandy killed at least 61 people
as it made its way through the Carribbean—53 of them in the desperately
poor country of Haiti, which remains consistently unprepared for
natural disasters. Sandy will almost certainly cause billions of dollars
of damage when it hits the East Coast. We’re unlikely to see a severe
death toll, thanks to the fact that rich societies like the U.S. have
gotten better at predicting and preparing for storms. (The famous 1938 Long Island Express hurricane,
another historic storm, killed some 800 people in the U.S.—a death toll
that would be impossible to imagine today.) As Sandy looms, let’s hope
we’re ready.
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