Meteorological Muses

Here’s the latest track for the National Hurricane center. Hurricane Sandy is a massive storm with an immensely expansive tropical storm magnitude wind field. A New Jersey Landfall is almost certain at this point, my forecast is just south of Sandy Hook, the hurricane center takes it in around Atlantic city – and either way it doesn’t matter. The impacts will be severe, and life threatening regardless.

For those who think this storm has been oversold to you – Let’s take a look at some numbers from this afternoon alone. We had impassable streets in Milford, East Haven, Stamford, Old Saybrook with this morning’s high tide almost 12 hours ago now. As of this evenings high tide, the storm surge has reached levels in excess of 3 feet. That’s within 2 feet of Irene’s surge nearly 18 hours before the height of the storm! If you were asked to evacuate, that’s why – and it is probably saving your life. The water could rise as much at 11 feet in western long island sound – and that doesn’t even count the 4-8 foot waves crashing on top of that water level. This is a situation the Connecticut coastline has not seen in your lifetime.

As for the wind impacts, Sandy is a large and powerful hurricane capable of significant and widespread damage to infrastructure through the downing of trees, the propulsion of projectiles, etc. For Long Island and the Connecticut coast, computer guidance continues to show a 12-18 hour period in which winds can gust past 60mph. Most locations didn’t even reach 60mph during Tropical storm Irene. The weather will deteriorate progressively through the night tonight and the morning tomorrow. Tropical storm forced sustained winds could start being felt as early as 11 am tomorrow and not taper off until the morning hours on Tuesday.

I hope you have done everything you could to prepare for this historic and unprecedented storm. Follow my facebook and twitter pages for updates throughout the day – and keep a very close eye on all information being disseminated through local media