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Hurricane Sandy made landfall on the east coast of America, affecting New York city.
Sarah Grintzevitch, Meteorologist at the Royal Meteorological Society, said:
“The effects of Hurricane Sandy are predicted to be far greater than those of 2011’s Hurricane Irene.
“Comparisons have been drawn between Hurricane Sandy and the ‘Perfect Storm’ of 1991 however there are a number of factors including elevated ocean temperatures and high tides that have led to even greater impacts than those witnessed during this much talked about storm.
“Hurricane Sandy has combined with wintery weather from the west and cold air from the north to create a much larger and more intense storm.
“Hurricane Sandy has demonstrated one of the largest expanses of tropical storm force winds on record.
“Although only classed as a category 1 hurricane we must bear in mind that such classifications take into account only wind speed and don’t account for size, location or rainfall.
“The classification of Hurricane Sandy has changed to ‘Post-Tropical Cyclone’ Sandy as it has now made landfall. A hurricane draws all its energy from the ocean and hence once over land must be reclassified as its energy is then attained from contrasting atmospheric temperatures.”
Kamran Moazami, Head of Buildings Structures at engineering consultancy WSP and the structural engineer on the Freedom Tower in New York, said:
“New York is a city of skyscrapers but tall buildings are designed to withstand high wind loads – we design structures for a 50 year wind event, up to 98 miles per hour and on top of that structures are designed for a factor of safety. The parts of the city that will suffer the most are the smaller structures and the infrastructure which makes up the nervous centre of the city. As in any disaster it is the lack of water, power and transport and flooding that can have the most devastating impact and effect on the speed of recovery.”
Met Office blog on the hurricane:
http://metofficenews.
Dr Jane Strachan, Willis Research Fellow at the University of Reading, said:
“Although only a category 1 hurricane, Sandy is causing big problems for the U. S. northeastern states due to its huge size and slow movement up the U. S. East Coast. Powerful winds, torrential rains and storm surges threaten states from the Carolinas to New England, and yesterday the National Hurricane Center warned of a storm surge affecting New Jersey, Long Island and New York Harbour of between 2 and 4 metres.
“After killing 60 people in the Caribbean last week, Sandy moved north and northeastward parallel to the southeast coast of the U. S., but today is expected to be drawn back northwestward toward the coast and is forecast to make landfall in southern New Jersey tonight. However, Sandy won’t have to come onshore for it to cause serious problems for the U. S. East coast. Storm surge and the associated flooding are the biggest worry, due to the strong winds and very low pressure, coinciding with high tides associated with a full moon. Additionally, heavy rains of up to 50mm per hour associated with this large and slow moving are making flooding a major concern.
“As Hurricane Sandy merged with a cold front, it has grown to over 3200 km in diameter and is now the largest hurricane in Atlantic storm history. Additionally, the storm is changing from tropical to extratropical in its structure, so that rather than the winds being more focused around the eye of the storm, the tropical-storm-force winds, reaching over 135 km/h, have spread out and are affecting a much larger area.
“Something that threatens hurricane monitoring is future satellite coverage of tropical storms. Vital information from polar satellites is fed into the models that help forecasters predict the path of storms like Sandy, providing warning information for the Caribbean and U.S. However, as a result of years of mismanagement, lack of funding and delays in launching replacements, it looks very likely that there will be a gap in polar satellite coverage, which would lead to reduced forecast quality. This was the worrying headline news in Friday’s New York Times, with existing satellites are nearing the end of their lives, while the launch of the next replacement (JPSS-1) has slipped to 2017, leading to a gap in coverage of at least a year.”
Professor Mark Saunders, Department of Space and Climate Physics at University College London, said:
“The situation with Hurricane Sandy will not become certain until after landfall late today (US east coast time).
“However, the two most unusual features of hurricane Sandy which may well make it unique as a storm are its track direction and curvature, and its relative strength.
“Track direction and curvature
From a location well offshore at a latitude of 35°-40°N the storm turns to the northwestward to strike the US mid-Atlantic coast. There is no precedent in hurricane records extending back to 1851 of a storm at this latitude taking this path. All historical hurricanes located well offshore at this latitude have followed the jet stream and tracked in a direction between north and east.
“Its strength for a hurricane striking the US mid-Atlantic coast in late October (which is near the end of the hurricane season).
“Sandy’s central pressure is currently forecast to be 945-950mb at landfall late on Monday. A pressure this low would exceed the previous record low pressure of 955mb for a hurricane landfall in this region at this time of year. It would also be close to the record low pressure of 946mb for any hurricane landfall north of Cape Hatteras; this record-holder being the ‘New England’ hurricane which occurred in September 1938.”