THE BIG ONE (Hurricane Cycle for NY now overdue)

NY Press ^ | September 2005 | Aaron Naparstek

[The Great RJ]

Last I heard North and South Dakota were safe from hurricaines.

[eastsider]

I'm staying on the 12th floor, thank you very much.

[NYer]

Thanks for the links ...........

LEFT: At 4:45 p.m. the storm surge of the 1938 hurricane reaches the very heart of Providence, Rhode Island. Waves can be seen in front of the Biltmore Hotel (right building), while marooned pedestrians gather on the steps of Providence City Hall. RIGHT: Looking down Dorrance Street at the height of the hurricane. (Photos Providence Journal 1940).

The eastern end of Fire Island, NY near Moriches Inlet after the 1938 hurricane. The main road through the island is just visible in the center of the lower portion of the photograph. More than 200 homes had been perched on dunes 20 feet high. The horrific storm tide swept nearly everything away. (Photo Courtesy Mitchel Field, 2nd Air Base Squadron - U.S. Army, NY 1938).

Long Island properties, especially those on the South Shore, now command million$ pricetags.

[Labyrinthos]

Water temp in the Gulf the week Katrina hit - 98 degrees. Water temp off NYC at the height of summer - 72 degrees. What does a Cat 1 need to become a Cat 3-5....warm water.

Water tempretures are currently in the 80's as far north as Va. (I think 81 degrees is the minimum tempreture needed for a hurricane to form, but the storm can sustain itself at lower temps.) As hurricanes hit cooler water, they tend to speed up, which means you can have to consider both wind speed and the speed of the hurrincane itself.

[simon says what]

Water temp in the Gulf the week Katrina hit - 98 degrees. Water temp off NYC at the height of summer - 72 degrees. What does a Cat 1 need to become a Cat 3-5....warm water.

Hurricanes threatening New York and New England gain their strength further south. As they begin to move north they pick up speed. They spend very little time over the cooler waters so they do not weaken that much. The waters a few hundred miles south of Long Island are still in the upper 70's. A storm moving north at 30mph is only going to have a few hours of weakening before landfall.

The water temps in the Gulf of Mexico were not 98 degrees before Katrina hit. They were between 86 and 89 degrees.

[Solon]

"Hog Island largely disappeared that night," Coch says. "As far as I know, it is the only incidence of the removal of an entire island by a hurricane."

Never heard of Hog Island or the storm of 1938. This was a fascinating article.

The article centered on NYC. But what of Long Island? In googling, they say that the hurricane of 1938 holds the forward speed record for any Atlantic hurricane. That means more lead time is needed for evacuations but... in a Cat 4/5 hurricane how do you evacutate millions of people off LI? The Throgs Neck?

Born & bred in Bay Shore, so this article sent chills down my spine.

[StAnDeliver]

"The only difference between now and then is that "now we have millions of people to offer the God of the Sea."

Yes, what would the NYeT be without capitalizing a mythological idol. Should have thrown in a graven image for good measure, Pinch.

"Hurricanes do not like right angles," Lee says. "[They allow] water to accumulate and pile up."

In keeping with the NYeT's rapid anthropomorphism, a little magical thinking. What do hurricanes "like", Pinch?

"...Low wind sheer and sea-surface pressure and a favorable African easterly jet stream all create ideal conditions for Atlantic hurricanes. Additionally, scientists say that man-made global warming is increasing the odds that tropical storms will dump on New York City with greater frequency and intensity."

I find no reason to believe a newspaper that cannot correctly spell wind "shear" in a story about hurricanes. Up yours, Pinch.

[StAnDeliver]

Well, apoligies to Pinch. I immediately assumed this poor wretch of a story was the NYT.

[jmaroneps37]

So's an earthquake and an ice age. Puleeeeeze.

[dead]

The vast majority of the city's eight million inhabitants simply have no idea that a hurricane can happen here.

Yet another journalist who thinks it is up to him to educate the complete idiots out there amongst the masses. "Set us straight, Johnny Typewriter! We'd know nothing if not for you!"

The "the vast majority" of New Yorkers are fully aware that a hurricane could hit the city.

They are not all complete idiots, despite their propensity towards voting Democratic.

[Labyrinthos]

And if you thought the people in New Orleans were animals... when this happens have your guns ready peeps cause you ain't seen nothing yet!

For a city of 8 million people, New Yorkers are fairly well behaved. There was no rioting or looting after 09.11 and very little looting, if any, during the two day blackout in August 2003. Unlike New Orleans and just about every other city south of the Mason-Dixon line, New York's crime rate is very low and so we don't have large numbers of criminal types waiting to take advantage of disaster. That may may not have been the situation twenty years ago, but that's the current reality.

[wtc911]

You evacuate north of Sunrise Highway if you are west of the east-end split. If you are on the south fork you move to higher ground like Shinnecock Hills since there will be no evacuation effective past the bottleneck. North Fork damage would be mostly wing except along the bay-facing areas.

Most of the North Shore is elevated already but the harbor towns would flood. Riverhead would be under water.

I've experienced hurricanes on both the South Shore and the North. The damage was greater on the south.

[wtc911]

The storm of '38 created the Moriches Inlet and destroyed a community called High Hill that was just east of Jones Beach and west of Tobay.

[Sam Cree]

Gotta go back and read the rest of the article, but I believe the odds of a storm retaining cat 4 status in those latitudes, like the 1938 one mentioned, are fairly long.

[wtc911]

NYers have already proven themselves as have NOers. We passed they didn't.

[SouthernBoyupNorth]

Given that 9/11 was an attack on one section of the city I was really impressed with the response and outpouring of help from the native New Yorker. However should a Big Hurricane impact New York the effects will be more wide spread and the devastation will make 9/11 look like a church outing by comparison. If the bad elements of New York behave themselves then I will be greatly surprised. More to the point there is a criminal element in every big city that will take advantage of such disasters... its a fact of life. It may not happen and I pray that it doesn't but the odds and the human condition are against it. This is all speculation and I am sure that over 99.9% of the people who inhabit the Big Apple are ordinary law abiding citizens who will help each other through times of adversity. It is the .1 % that will turn a disaster like this into a war-zone.

[printhead]

I was just thinking the same thing; imagine a Spike Lee kind of flick where all the homeys, the hookers and all the rest decocked their nines, put away their crack pipes and reported for duty. Add a hip-hop soundtrack interspersed with a "Jaws" kind of drum beat, pass around a bucket for donations to feed those disenfranchised by all the storms caused by global warming and there you have it - instant Oscar material.

[mewzilla]

Upstate got nailed by Agnes in '72. That wasn't a picnic.

[COUNTrecount]

http://gis.nyc.gov/oem/emols/he/location.jsp?geocodeID=0

[eastsider]

Excellent link. Thanks for posting.