I don’t know why, but for some reason, this storm talk is concerning me more than others. I’m hoping it’s hype or it just rolls out to sea, but I can’t quite put my finger on why it’s sort of bothering me.
Oh, wait; maybe I know why in the back of my head: Agnes.
Yeah, as soon as I saw the updated landfall estimate, I thought, oh whoopee — time for all our weather folk to go stark raving mad! They LIVE for this stuff.
As the now-trite saying goes: It Is What It Is.
The 1991 storm they are comparing this storm to hit my area very hard. I am more than 250 miles inland, and we had sustained winds of 60 mph or more for 12 hours. Close to 2 ft of snow as well. Most intense weather event I have been through.
The problem with Sandy is it will be slow moving, dumping huge amounts of rain, with high winds just to stir things up. Not all the trees have lost their leaves, and the ground isn’t frozen. In areas with old growth trees and above ground powerlines, the possibilities of widespread power outages and road closures are great.
The western reaches of the storm may get a large, wet snowfall, again real bad on trees and powerlines.
That part of the country gets very few tropical storms. Most folks have no idea how much flooding can occur, as they may have never seen their area flood in 40 years or so.
IMHO, the dangers from this storm aren’t the typical hurricane dangers (storm surge, brief high winds, localized flooding, etc) but more like a massive thunderstorm event lasting for nearly a day, complete with high sustained winds, widespread damage and outages covering multi-county areas somewhat inland from the coast.
Stay sane, and stay off the roads, and we will see you on the other side.