Continuano ad aumentare le probabilità che l'uragano Sandy salga lungo la costa orientale degli Usa fino ad incontrare il vortice in quota canadese, per formare un sistema ibrido... la cosiddetta "Tempesta Perfetta".
Probabilità arrivate al
90%!
Sarà una tempesta molto grande, intensa e potenzialmente disastrosa, data l'alta densità di popolazione dell'area che andrà a colpire.
A complicare la situazione ci sarà una componente mareale che potrebbe amplificare la potenza delle onde sulla costa.
Frankenstorm, così è stata "ribattezzata" (non so se perché arriverà ad halloween o perché sarà un mostruosa creatura composta da altre), secondo i meteorologi del NOAA, potrebbe produrre danni incalcolabili e rischiare di mietere vittime, superando addirittura la violenza di quella del 1991.
Queste le zone a rischio per il landfall:
Odds are a few major metropolitan areas within the swath from Norfolk, Va., to New York City to Bangor, Maine, will be hit the hardest.
Impacts
Some areas will be hit with damaging winds, power outages, flooding rainfall, battering surf and storm surge. Windswept rain will slow travel in general. Some roads may be blocked by high water and downed trees. Air travel disruptions could radiate outward from the epicenter.
Anywhere near the storm center to 100 miles or more to the northeast of the center during landfall, there is an elevated risk of coastal flooding due to storm surge.
The storm will be making landfall around the same date as the full moon, a time when higher tides occur relative to the balance of the month. There is the potential for a storm surge of five feet or more in some areas, depending on point of landfall and shape of the local coastline.
Trees and power lines will come down. The strongest winds would also occur near and northeast of the storm center to within a few hours during landfall. Gusts to hurricane force (74 mph) are possible. However, gusts (40 to 60 mph) can occur for a time around much of the storm's circulation out to at least 100 miles and perhaps more.
While the dangerous storm is still days away, the probability of the feared left hook has increased and will take place during a big atmospheric fight from the mid-Atlantic to New England and neighboring Canada. The result could be a knockout blow to some areas and not only along the immediate coast.
Tens of millions of people and thousands of communities could be impacted by the storm.
Exactly where this change of direction takes place is critical for the worst impacts, which have the potential to be very disruptive, if not very damaging and in some cases life-threatening.
NOAA to East: Beware of Coming 'Frankenstorm'
WASHINGTON October 25, 2012 (AP)
An unusual nasty mix of a hurricane and a winter storm that forecasters are now calling
"Frankenstorm" is likely to blast most of the East Coast next week, focusing the worst of its weather mayhem around New York City and New Jersey.
Government forecasters on Thursday upped the odds of a major weather mess, now saying there's a
90 percent chance that the East will get steady gale-force winds, heavy rain, flooding and maybe snow starting Sunday and stretching past Halloween on Wednesday.
Meteorologists say it is likely to cause $1 billion in damage.
The storm is a combination of Hurricane Sandy, now in the Caribbean, an early winter storm in the West, and a blast of arctic air from the North. They're predicted to collide and park over the country's most populous coastal corridor and reach as far inland as Ohio.
The hurricane part of the storm is likely to come ashore somewhere in New Jersey on Tuesday morning, said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecaster Jim Cisco. But this is a storm that will affect a far wider area, so people all along the East have to be wary, Cisco said.
Coastal areas from Florida to Maine will feel some effects, mostly from the hurricane part, he said, and the other parts of the storm will reach inland from North Carolina northward.
Once the hurricane part of the storm hits, "it will get broader. It won't be as intense, but its effects will be spread over a very large area," the National Hurricane Center's chief hurricane specialist, James Franklin, said Thursday.
One of the more messy aspects of the expected storm is that it just won't leave. The worst of it should peak early Tuesday, but it will stretch into midweek, forecasters say. Weather may start clearing in the mid-Atlantic the day after Halloween and Nov. 2 in the Northeast, Cisco said.
"It's almost a weeklong, five-day, six-day event," Cisco said Thursday from NOAA's northern storm forecast center in College Park, Md. "It's going to be a widespread serious storm."
With every hour, meteorologists are getting more confident that this storm is going to be bad and they're able to focus their forecasts more.
The New York area could see around 5 inches of rain during the storm, while there could be snow southwest of where it comes inland, Cisco said. That could mean snow in eastern Ohio, southwestern Pennsylvania, western Virginia, and the Shenandoah Mountains, he said.
Both private and federal meteorologists are calling this a storm that will likely go down in the history books.
"We don't have many modern precedents for what the models are suggesting," Cisco said.
It is likely to hit during a full moon when tides are near their highest, increasing coastal flooding potential, NOAA forecasts warn. And with some trees still leafy and the potential for snow, power outages could last to Election Day, some meteorologists fear.
Some have compared it to the so-called Perfect Storm that struck off the coast of New England in 1991, but Cisco said that one didn't hit as populated an area and is not comparable to what the East Coast may be facing. Nor is it like last year's Halloween storm, which was merely an early snowstorm in the Northeast.
"The Perfect Storm only did $200 million of damage and I'm thinking a billion," said Jeff Masters, meteorology director of the private service Weather Underground. "Yeah, it will be worse."
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wi...43#.UImWfW9mLD8
