Posted on 10/28/2012 10:33:56 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
MYFOXNY.COM/AP -Transit officials in New York are preparing for a total shutdown of subway, bus and train service as Hurricane Sandy continues to bear down on the metropolitan region.
All service will be suspended at 7 p.m. on Sunday.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to start planning for an orderly suspension of service.
New York City subways and buses will start phasing out service at 7 p.m. Metro-North Railroad and the Long Island Rail Road will suspend service at 7 p.m. Sunday.
The city's mass transit system is the nation's largest. The subway alone has a daily ridership of more than 5 million.
(Excerpt) Read more at myfoxny.com ...
Newspaper headlines for November 7th: “Obama would have won if it wasn’t for hurricane Sandy.”
It’s always nice to have a fallback alibi. ;-]
Not being frm NYC wonder if is possible for the subway to flood
Prayers for everyone in the path of this storm
The media is overhyping this storm beyond all comprehension. People who sell batteries and bottled water are going to make a killing.
How long before the Climate Change nuts come out and scream...”WE TOLD YOU SO!”
The concern with SANDY is not the wind and rain, its the tidal surge. At 1130 this morning, we had a high tide 3-4 feet above normal without tomorrow night’s full moon and with the storm 575 miles south of here. Living on the water, I know about the wolf cryers. This one doesn’t look like an average storm.
Let’s pray the storm peters out for both the sake of lives & property & also so Obama isn’t delivered both a national distraction from the campaign & opportunity to look like a stand up guy (to wishy washy independents). Romney would be paralyzed & forced to walk a tight line campaigning in the middle of a disaster.
Yes -- at least the subways in lower Manhattan. Irene came close, but was a foot or so shy of topping over and flooding the subways. Sandy may manage to do it, but on the second high tide of Monday, not the first.
We just came back from the beach -- and it was awfully windy -- amazing considering how far away this storm still is. After Irene -- that was not a hurricane when it hit us -- I do not think this is being hyped at all. If anything, it's still being underestimated. Less than half of the ocean-facing properties we saw were boarded up.
I know that water has to be constantly pumped out of the underground subway system there. Don’t need more. I hate it though when the libs use something like this to push some far left political crap.
Yes...it can happen and does somewhat frequently when we experience flash flooding, although disruptions are minor. The subway has a very effective pumping system that limits disruptions. The problem will be storm surges which can affect lower Manhattan. We got lucky with Irene and hopefully no big issues this time. As SamAdams said, we get a few Nor’Easters a year so generally we are used to these types of storms, however, they are predicting this to be different than what we normally experience.
GOD acts in mysterious ways.
“This will amount to little more than a wind-driven rainstorm for most. We get these several times a year in the Northeast. No...big...deal.”
Generally I share you opinion on media hype on hurricanes. Not everyone of them is a Katrina....or a Sandy, if the computer models verify.
But Sandy is different from a normal Cat 1 storm at her location for several reasons;
Super Low Barometer.
The last reading was 28.08 and falling. This is extremely low for a Cat 1 hurricane. It is more like what is found in a strong Cat 3. There some models that show sustained winds of 100 MPH at landfall in the NYC,Long Island, North Jersey Shore area. Sandys winds could easily be Cat 2 at landfall, Most computer models have her intensifying as it approaches land.
And these are the wind speeds at the ground. They could much higher on NYC skyscrapers, resulting in blown out windows like happened in Miami with Wilma.
Long Duration of the Winds
Even if Sandy’s worst case wind scenario doesnt verify, Cat 1 winds and tropical force winds for hour after hour can cause widespread damage. I learned this the hard way when Hurricane Francis hit Florida in 2004.
I didnt prepare for power outages because the eye was supposed to landfall 250 miles south of us. Because Francis was a huge storm several feeder bands trained over us for almost 12 hours.Even thoug the highest wind gusts were only 73 mph, we lost power for 10 days. Some of the isolated rural areas were with out power for a month! Sandys TS winds extend almost 500 miles from the center,(twice the size of Francis) people in the right location could experience them for days.
A huge storm surge. Sandy projected to landfall at high tide on a Full moon
When these storms are giants like Katrina, Ike, and Sandy, they have storm surges at much higher categories than their wind categories. Katrina was a Cat 3 based on its land fall wind speeds yet the storm surge was a Cat 5+. Ike was a cat 2 at landfall, yet the storm surge was a 4+. Sandy could have a 4 or a 5 storm surge which would flood the NYC subways for starters.
Massive Power Outages
Because of the long duration of the winds covering a huge area of high population density, this could be the largest power outage in US history. Power could be out for over a month in many areas. Sandy is not expected to exit the area quickly once she arrives so rainfall totals and snowfall totals could be very high.
We live in interesting times.
“The concern with SANDY is not the wind and rain, its the tidal surge. At 1130 this morning, we had a high tide 3-4 feet above normal without tomorrow night’s full moon and with the storm 575 miles south of here. Living on the water, I know about the wolf cryers. This one doesn’t look like an average storm.”
Agreed. I just talked to my brother who went surfing at the North Jetties near Jacksonville, Florida. He always surfs there when passing hurricanes bring in larger waves.
He was dumbfounded by how high the tide was.He said the ocean had risen so high that it was cutting deeply into mature sand dunes. This was much higher than he had ever seen the tide there with a passing offshore hurricane.
This is not your average storm.
Really.
We have a hurricane moving INTO the Mid-Atlantic instead of a N'oreaster paralleling the coast.
We have a windfield of tropical storm-force winds that extends out 500 miles.
Some areas will see sustained winds of 50+ mph for nearly two full days. Areas with large, mature trees, many still with full leaf cover, with adjacent power lines.
Meterologists who don't hype weather events are saying this will be bad. The totality of this storm is unprecedented in modern meterological history.
Yet you see it as no big deal. We'll see.
The media is hyping Sandy unbelievably. I firmly believe that it is a convenient distraction from talking about Benghazi.
On the other hand, this storm has the lowest barometric pressure of any storm we have had in more than two decades. New York City sits at sea level. We have never really had a direct hit of major flooding. They are expecting winds that could gust up to 70mph. In Westchester county, where I live, this means downed trees, power outages, blocked roads and parkways. 3-4 inches of rain will flood out the usual parkways and rivers. It’s a full moon tomorrow night which brings higher tides than normal. Tidal surge could really do a number. Last year, Irene wreaked absolute havoc in areas that normally do not sustain flooding.
This storm is also huge. Think I heard this morning that it’s 500 miles wide. The wind was picking up this morning already and the temperature is dropping a little.
I, being a good prepper, have my generator and chain saws ready to go, plenty of food and alcohol in the house, and lots of water and guns. Bring it on.
Stu Ostro, Senior Meteorologist, The Weather Channel
Oct 28, 2012 12:46 pm ET
Graphical tropical update:Tropics Watch
SANDY
- History is being written as an extreme weather event continues to unfold, one which will occupy a place in the annals of weather history as one of the most extraordinary to have affected the United States.
- REGARDLESS OF WHAT THE OFFICIAL DESIGNATION IS NOW OR AT/AFTER LANDFALL -- HURRICANE (INCLUDING IF "ONLY" A CATEGORY ONE), TROPICAL STORM, POST-TROPICAL, EXTRATROPICAL, WHATEVER -- OR WHAT TYPE OF WARNINGS ARE ISSUED BY THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE AND NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER -- PEOPLE IN THE PATH OF THIS STORM NEED TO HEED THE THREAT IT POSES WITH UTMOST URGENCY.
- TAKE COASTAL FLOODING EVACUATION ORDERS SERIOUSLY; PREPARE FOR DOWNED TREES AND STRUCTURAL DAMAGE BY OBSERVING TORNADO SAFETY GUIDELINES, I.E. STAYING INSIDE AND GETTING INTO THE LOWEST, MOST-INTERIOR PORTION OF THE BUILDING OR ANOTHER DESIGNATED SAFE PLACE; BE KEENLY AWARE OF YOUR LOCATION'S SUSCEPTIBILITY TO FLASH FLOODING (URBAN AND SMALL STREAM) FROM RAINFALL AND RIVER RISES; KNOW THAT YOU COULD BE WITHOUT POWER FOR A LONG TIME BUT ALSO UNDERSTAND THE DANGERS OF CARBON MONOXIDE POISONING FROM IMPROPER USE OF GENERATORS.
- With Sandy having already brought severe impacts to the Caribbean Islands and a portion of the Bahamas, and severe erosion to some beaches on the east coast of Florida, it is now poised to strike the northeast United States with a combination of track, size, structure and strength that is unprecedented in the known historical record there.
- Already, there are ominous signs: trees down in eastern North Carolina, the first of countless that will be blown over or uprooted along the storm's path; and coastal flooding in Florida, North Carolina and Virginia, these impacts occurring despite the center of circulation being so far offshore, an indication of Sandy's exceptional size and potency.
- A meteorologically mind-boggling combination of ingredients is coming together: one of the largest expanses of tropical storm (gale) force winds on record with a tropical or subtropical cyclone in the Atlantic or for that matter anywhere else in the world; a track of the center making a sharp left turn in direction of movement toward New Jersey in a way that is unprecedented in the historical database, as it gets blocked from moving out to sea by a pattern that includes an exceptionally strong ridge of high pressure aloft near Greenland; a "warm-core" tropical cyclone embedded within a larger, nor'easter-like circulation; and eventually tropical moisture and arctic air combining to produce heavy snow in interior high elevations. This is an extraordinary situation, and I am not prone to hyperbole.
- That gigantic size is a crucially important aspect of this storm. The massive breadth of its strong winds will produce a much wider scope of impacts than if it were a tiny system, and some of them will extend very far inland. A cyclone with the same maximum sustained velocities (borderline tropical storm / hurricane) but with a very small diameter of tropical storm / gale force winds would not present nearly the same level of threat or expected effects. Unfortunately, that's not the case. This one's size, threat, and expected impacts are immense.
- Those continue to be: very powerful, gusty winds with widespread tree damage and an extreme amount and duration of power outages; major coastal flooding from storm surge along with large battering waves on top of that and severe beach erosion; flooding from heavy rainfall; and heavy snow accumulations in the central Appalachians.
- Sandy is so large that there is even a tropical storm warning in effect in Bermuda, and the Bermuda Weather Service is forecasting wave heights outside the reef as high as 30'.
- There is a serious danger to mariners from a humongous area of high seas which in some areas will include waves of colossal height. Wave forecast models are predicting significant wave heights up to 50+ feet, and that is the average of the top 1/3, meaning that there will be individual waves that are even higher. The Perfect Storm, originally known as the Halloween Storm because of the time of year when it occurred, peaking in 1991 on the same dates (October 28-30) as Sandy, became a part of popular culture because of the tragedy at sea. This one has some of the same meteorological characteristics and ingredients coming together, but in an even more extreme way, and slamming more directly onshore and then much farther inland and thus having a far greater scope and variety of impacts.
Amen to that.
Wonder how it will affect broadcasting...particularly from New York.
Perhaps folks will just stay put at their stations.
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