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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.

The media is overhyping this storm beyond all comprehension. People who sell batteries and bottled water are going to make a killing.

“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.

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.

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.

Extraordinary Storm, Extremely Serious Threat

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.

You can call it "hype" all you want. My memory is strong enough to be cautious as this sort of thing unfolds. If anything, perhaps the only hype is that this is being referred to as a "hurricane" in the warnings from New Jersey northward. I can pretty much guarantee that the sustained winds will not be strong enough for the storm to be categorized as a hurricane by the time it comes through here. In fact, it won't even be a tropical storm, either.

This is a classic "Nor'easter" the likes of which we don't see more than a couple of times every few decades. The biggest threat, as others have pointed out, is the tidal surge from the storm itself -- exacerbated by the wind out of the east driving waves into inlets and river mouths along the East Coast. This means there will be a surge of ocean water up into these areas while 5-10 inches of rain is falling in the interior of New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. Quite simply, the runoff from the rainfall will not be able to drain out of the watersheds as quickly as usual because of the higher water levels downstream.

Some folks are comparing this to the infamous March 1993 "super-storm," but my recollection is that it may be more similar to the December 1992 storm. For those Freepers who remember that one, it occurred just before Christmas in 1992, and the storm surge was unlike anything I've ever seen in the NYC metro area. Not only did the storm peak during a full moon that made the tides that much higher, but there was also a total lunar eclipse during the full moon that month -- which meant the storm surge came on top of what was an extraordinarily high tide.