Quoting myself

[gwendally]

Here's what I said on August 20th:

"rising sea levels and more frequent storms means that a storm surge from a hurricane during a full moon is going to cause a Katrina to hit some city on the east coast on a regular basis."

The reason I keep thinking I can tell the future is because I'm pretty damn good at it.

Comments

[interactiveleaf]

I'm laughing at all the people calling this "the storm of the century". This isn't the storm of the century. This is a preview. This is a trailer.

[foreverbeach]

Seriously? Big storms are hitting the east coast on a more frequent basis than in the past?

[coercedbynutmeg]

No.

[gwendally]

I'm really not at all sure that they do. I think this was a typical rainy day that got a lot of attention because you could see the circular pattern of the clouds from space.

I just saw a damage report from Holyoke, MA, on the I-91 that was closed just south of there. They said they had one tree fall on one power line and 75 people lost power for 90 minutes. That's it. Sum total of the damage.

That is, if you don't count the lost productivity.

[coercedbynutmeg]

Two things:

1) I'm not even sure this storm made landfall as a hurricane. If anything, it was a weak category 1 when the eyewall made landfall (as per Fox News's second-to-second coverage), whereas Katrina was a category 3. This was about rain and tidal flooding (primarily the latter), not wind. There won't be any arguments with insurance companies about what caused the storm damage like there was with Katrina.

2) When you develop every single inch of coastline from Eastport, Maine to Miami, Florida, how can a hurricane hit the coast without inundating a city or two?

[barking_iguana]

Winds of 70-85 miles an hour over hundreds of miles, with most the area having trees that have never seen such winds, is a very big deal.

[gwendally]

Certainly to people getting them. Not so much for the people forecasted to receive 40 mph winds (who actually got gusts of 30 mph winds).

Happily (?), we regularly have ice storms that bring down dead branches anyway. :-)

[ford_prefect42]

Mostly this was an issue of where, not what. It's a pretty normal storm for further south, it just happens to have hit NYC. A city that rarely sees tropical cyclones.

My dad tells the story of a hurricane that hit dublin NH when he was a kid hard enough to blow down houses. Dublin being 200 miles north of NYC, and 100 miles inland.

Really, the only unique thing about this storm is the "frankenstorm" aspect of it, and that's of interest only to meteorological researchers.

ETA
Do you think this storm profile would have been significantly different if mean sea level were 4 inches lower (the total sea level rise between 1950 and now)?

[tobor_1138]

Then start a hedge fund and invest your own money.

[gwendally]

"Outlook not so good". :-)