It was a Category One storm. The near hysterical coverage by the news media with reports of a ‘Frankenstorm’ or ‘The Perfect Storm’ made it seem like another Camille or Andrew. It affected a lot of people due to population density, but as far as hurricanes go it was not a super storm. I lived in Fla for over 30 years and took the media coverage as kind of an insult to the folks in the South East who’ve gone through much worse. Things will be better in a few days, till then you just have to deal with it.
First of all, Sandy was estimated to be four times more powerful than the Perfect Storm.
Second, many folks are saying the Saffir-Simpson scale needs to be re-worked to not just rely on wind and structural damage. Katrina hit as a Cat 3 but had Cat 5 surge. Ike hit as a Cat 2 but had Cat 4 surge. Sandy was a Cat 1 with Cat 3 surge. Sense a pattern? Very large storms, covering a wide expanse of ocean, can create surge much larger than their wind-driven Saffir-Simpson scale ratings. And surge is in most cases the most destructive aspect of hurricanes (with Andrew being a notable exception).
This kind of talk makes me angry. This storm may not have been as powerful as those two, but it hit one of the most densely (if not the most) populated areas in the country. The loss is deep and wide to the people and the infrastructure. More people have already died due to Sandy than died in Andrew.
Camille and Andrew were worse hurricanes, no doubt. But I see people tossing ‘just a Cat 1 storm’, well the winds were not the concern, never were, and Cat 1 just refers to wind speed and by proxy wind damage.
The concern was always coastal flooding with this storm, and that is exactly what happened. Locally in Conn, for example, the storm surge was worse than the 1938 Hurricane, which started as a cat 4 or 5 and hit land here as a cat 3. This storm made landfall about 250 miles down the coast. We went through 3 high tides before the storm surge was over.