Actually a cat 2 hurricane coming straight into the heavily populated NE corridor would be very, very bad. While Sandy is currently weakening and appears to be breaking up, there is still a lot of energy in that storm, it still has a very intense core and her jog to the west will put her over some very warm gulfstream water which may lead to strengthening and expanding in size. It could hit as a cat 1 but Sandy will have an extremely large wind field and may further intensify when it meets up with the other system even if it doesn’t regain hurricane status.
Again, I say: Agnes.
Agnes came up from the Gulf, crossed over FL and the Carolinas before exiting into the Atlantic, making a second land fall in the NYC area as a strong tropical storm. Agnes also merged with a low pressure system and like Sandy is predicted to do, slowed down and dumped a lot of rain that cause epic flooding especially in PA. I was about 8 years old when Agnes came through Baltimore and I don’t recall much in the way of wind but lots of rain. My mom was from Harrisburg PA and we used to live there. I remember her listening to the AM radio, a station of Harrisburg, hearing the reports of all the flooding. The Agnes flooding crest records on the Susquehanna have yet to be broken, even with the very bad flooding we had here last year after the double shot of Irene and Lee. Sandy may change all that. And if there are widespread power outages, it could be worse, much worse than Agnes.
I didn’t say it would be good. I’m just saying that the media hype and the “Frankenstorm” label make it sound like it’s going to be the world’s worst natural disaster.
Fortunately for Obama, it takes the headlines off Benghazi.
Here is a Saturday link from Yahoo:
http://news.yahoo.com/amid-dire-forecast-sandy-hurricane-again-135151448.html
Aside from storm damage with a 200 mile diameter ring of 75 mph winds, when it goes inland and goes freezing with moist warm water coming off Lake Erie, there may be either a monster show storm or even more damaging super ice storm like the one that did so much damage in NY state and Canada in the 1990s.