Report: Northeast due for a major hurricane

[Roon]

NEW YORK - The Northeast is ill prepared and long overdue for a major hurricane, the private forecaster AccuWeather said in a special report on Monday, a little more than two months before the start of hurricane season in the Atlantic.

“The Northeast is staring down the barrel of a gun,” Joe Bastardi, AccuWeather’s chief hurricane forecaster, said in the report.

"With the weather patterns and hydrology we’re seeing in the oceans, the likelihood of a major hurricane making landfall in the Northeast is not a question of if but when,” he said.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11927624/

[jus_the_facts]

1. I've seen history of storm tracks that put at least one going into Boston

....it's not like they've never had any up that way before. :shrug:

[Warpy]

4. Anything that hits Boston will hit Cape Cod first

and lose a lot of punch, but all those shiny new tract houses and condos on the Cape will be trashed.

Either that, or the track will be a repeat of the 38 hurricane, right up Narragansett Bay and through Providence before it loses steam.

The Big Dig's pumps will be overloaded by the rainfall, though, so it'll be a huge mess even without the winds and storm surge.

[CottonBear]

2. Well, our Northeastern citizens shouldn't expect FEMA to help.

Hell, if NYC or Boston or Philly gets wiped out by a hurricane I fully expect that the federal government won't help them rebuild because the people were too stupid and chose to live in a low-lying coastal areas prone to hurricanes. :sarcasm:

[Mikimouse]

3. No thank you...went through Hurricane Gloria, and have

no desire to see that again, even though I no longer live in the northeast. I still have many friends in the area around Boston.

[Warpy]

5. I was in Falmouth for that one

There were a lot of trees down and a lot of rich dopes hadn't rigged their boats for the storm, so the boats had broken loose and smashed into bridges and docks around the harbors.

That one was a glancing blow, too. There was no rain at all, just sustained 80 mph winds.

One thing you always forget about hurricanes is how LOUD those things are.

I live in the desert now. All we have to worry about is fire season.

[Mikimouse]

22. I was in Rockland at the time...

Lost my car when a bid branch fell about 60 feet right on the roof. We also didn't have power for about two and a half weeks. I live in the south now and far from any hurricane areas (though we do have tornados around here).

[Canuckistanian]

6. Hurricane Hazel (Oct. 1954)

This was the strongest hurricane to hit so far north (North Carlolina)

Hurricane Hazel is the only recorded Category 4 hurricane to strike North Carolina or any states further north, although several other hurricanes (including Diana of 1984 and Helene of 1958) have come very close to doing so. There have been 10 recorded Category 3 hurricanes to strike North Carolina since 1851, and several others to strike further north.

I mention this because my father was involved in a rescue operation on the shore of Lake Ontario near Toronto. The storm continued across the northeast and hit Ontario pretty hard.

[Minstrel Boy]

14. Hazel killed 81 in Toronto and region

and resulted in the prohibition of construction on river flood planes.

http://www.hurricanehazel.ca/

[Canuckistanian]

15. Yup, I lived near one of those

It became a large park. My folks said that hundreds of people once lived there.

[Lisa]

36. given that Hazel wasn't even a hurricane by the time it hit Ontario ...

.... it sure had an impact. (Strictly speaking it was an "extratropical cyclone" which had merged with another storm -- these kinds of transitions can be hard to predict, even with today's technology.) The fact that the ground was already saturated from earlier rains made matters even worse, because there was nowhere for the water to go. (There is even more urban sprawl 50 years later, with much of the soil covered with cement, which could also lead to rapid flooding if Hazel showed up today.)

This site has some archival photos (and the isobar maps as Hazel evolved).

http://www.atl.ec.gc.ca/weather/hurricane/hazel/en/storm.html

I've always been wary of those perky newspeople, who would happily announce that a particular hurricane would "only" be a Category 1 or 2 by the time it reached a certain place. Those who know storm history are well aware that even a Category 1 (if it's slow-moving, dumps a lot of rain, and affects areas which don't see hurricanes very often) could wreck a lot of havoc. If it's true that the hurricane tracks seem to be shifting to the west, I don't like the thought of more of those things working their way up the Mississippi Valley or swinging across New England.

[buddysmellgood]

21. Those were the kind of statistics the NorthEast could take comfort in

before global warming. Soon, I predict, we'll be watching in amazement as the records are broken.

[Lisa]

34. people in Ontario still remember this ...

My folks tell me about the flooding (and fatalities). Across town from our house there's a clearing in the forest, which everyone calls "Hazel's Wrath" -- the trees still haven't grown back after more than half a century.

[rurallib]

7. Isn't Accuweather the company that Santorum tried to

make people use to get weather reports - for a price? Weren't they less than accurate on Katrina and a few other predictions last year? This has been rolling around in my mind since I heard this.

[Pirate Smile]

8. I noticed months ago while at my In-laws that Faux uses Accuweather.

What a shock!

[InsultComicDog]

24. Well, they are a Pennsylvania based company

In the State College area, though I wouldn't be surprised to find they are also campaign contributors to Santorum.

I've always thought highly of their forecasts, though.

[LynneSin]

28. You are correct on that one

And isn't it funny that Pennsylvania happens to be a Northeastern State, that although they aren't coastal they have a major metrolpolitian city with a massive port.




If a Hurricane hit the Delmarva Pennisula on either side and not direct landfall, a hurricane could stay powerful enough to hit Pennsylvania. Yeah, that's gonna be a longshot, but wouldn't it be nice for Santorum to find another way to frighten Pennsylvanians into voting for him!

[KittyWampus]

9. I live in the "Hamptons". Idiots build on the dunes & install insta-lawns

Haven't had a big one since '38. This time around the strip heading out towards Montauk will probably stay under water permanently.

[Catrina]

25. I'm not far from you ~ SI actually ~ the last one here was hurricane

Bob. It was not a very strong one, but still did a lot of damage, and we were without power for 10 days.

People here are getting nervous about hurricanes. After Katrina, I will definitely take the advice to evacuate. Instructions to always have things like photos, important papers etc. packed and ready to put in your car, are beginning to make sense now.

Looking at that map, it's scary to see where we are in the water ~ let's hope that this year is not as bad as last year. I do agree that Montauk would probably be completely submerged should a strong, cat. 4 or 5 hit the East End.

[wordpix2]

35. all over East Coast, people building on dunes, in storm surge zone

But as long as our tax dollars and insurance cos. bail them out and land use regs allow it, they'll keep building in these areas.

[MrPrax]

10. For what it's worth--a shameless plug...

If you use Firefox you can get the AccuWeather extension

It's kinda kewl actually...you can change the profiles to check the local temps/forecasts in your fav cities...

[LynneSin]

29. Hell NO!!! I'm not using anything that supports Rick Santorum

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/epaper/2005/04/21/m1a_wx_0421.html

Do you want a seven-day weather forecast for your ZIP code? Or hour-by-hour predictions of the temperature, wind speed, humidity and chance of rain? Or weather data beamed to your cellphone?

That information is available for free from the National Weather Service.

But under a bill pending in the U.S. Senate, it might all disappear.

The bill, introduced last week by Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., would prohibit federal meteorologists from competing with companies such as AccuWeather and The Weather Channel, which offer their own forecasts through paid services and free ad-supported Web sites.

BTW - Rick gets big bucks from Accuweather, which is based in State College, PA

[MrPrax]

31. Oh I wasn't following...

Really...hmmm...

Oh well...I don't think I can delete my post--but will try...and I am removing as we speak...

But But it's kewl!!!
(Why isn't the government ever kewl?)

Damn--next you'll tell my operating system has spurious 'data mining' code that sends information back to some IP in Redmond, washington...

OH...I hate those capitalists...

Point well taken and thx

(can't delete it...MrPrax no longer endorses the sentiments in Message #10)

[0007]

41. Thanks for the tip!

[stepnw1f]

11. Hurricane "Pack M'Cahhh"

[seafan]

12. And Rick Santorum is trying to force National Weather Service data offline

in favor of AccuWeather, a private entity, that just happens to be a big campaign donor!


April 21, 2005

The bill, introduced last week by Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., would prohibit federal meteorologists from competing with companies such as AccuWeather and The Weather Channel, which offer their own forecasts through paid services and free ad-supported Web sites.

snip

.....Scott Bradner, a technical consultant at Harvard University.

He says that as he reads the bill, a vast amount of federal weather data would be forced offline.

"The National Weather Service Web site would have to go away," Bradner said. "What would be permitted under this bill is not clear — it doesn't say. Even including hurricanes."

snip

A spokesman for Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said the bill threatens to push the weather service back to a "pre-Internet era" — a questionable move in light of the four hurricanes that struck the state last year. Nelson serves on the Senate Commerce Committee, which has been assigned to consider the bill.

"The weather service proved so instrumental and popular and helpful in the wake of the hurricanes. How can you make an argument that we should pull it off the Net now?" said Nelson's spokesman, Dan McLaughlin. "What are you going to do, charge hurricane victims to go online, or give them a pop-up ad?"

snip

(Santorum) also said expanded federal services threaten the livelihoods of private weather companies.

"It is not an easy prospect for a business to attract advertisers, subscribers or investors when the government is providing similar products and services for free," Santorum said.

AccuWeather has been an especially vocal critic of the weather service and its parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

snip

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/epaper/2005/04/21/m1a_wx_0421.html



And don't forget this:

May 27, 2005

WASHINGTON - Two days before Sen. Rick Santorum introduced a bill that critics say would restrict the National Weather Service, his political action committee received a $2,000 donation from the chief executive of AccuWeather Inc., a leading provider of weather data.

snip

Santorum said the $2,000 contribution, received from AccuWeather CEO Joel Myers on April 12, came during a fundraiser in State College that happened to be two days before the bill was filed. He said he has worked on the issue for three years.

The donation was disclosed in the April filing to the FEC by Santorum's PAC, America's Foundation.

"I don't think there's any coincidence between the two," Santorum said. "It's just that I happened to have a fundraiser in the town he was in."

Combined, Joel Myers and his brother, Barry Myers, AccuWeather's executive vice president, have donated more than $11,000 to Santorum and the Republican Party since 2003, according to FEC filings compiled by PoliticalMoneyLine, a campaign finance tracking group.

Barry Myers said it was ridiculous to think there was a correlation between the "modest" donations and the filing of the bill.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=795841&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312

[woodsprite]

18. I hate that fact, but I love Bastardi's forecasts and accuracy. n/t

[kainah]

13. Long Beach Island, NJ

My grandmother had a cottage in Beach Haven and, when I was a child, a hurricane struck & cut the long barrier island in half. I still remember seeing an aerial view of the island that was in Life magazine as a 3 page pullout.

I've been back a few times in recent years and it wouldn't take much to totally destroy that whole island. And, I'm sure, a lot of the other overly developed barrier islands all along the middle east coast.

[redwitch]

32. my grandparents had a house in Beach Haven.

I remember touring the island after the storm. I was a little kid and I was absolutely amazed at the devastation. The beaches at Holgate and Barnegat dropped off about 20 or 30 feet. Houses washed away, laying in the road, large appliances half buried in the sand at the road's edge. Their house was by the bay- no damage. For the remainder of my childhood there was a steady stream of large trucks hauling massive boulders to build the jetties that supposedly stop the terrible erosion. One of my father's co workers was killed when one of the huge boulders fell onto her volkswagen beetle. very vivid memories for me.

[Davis_X_Machina]

16. Many south-facing...

..bodies of water, up which a hurricaine can drive a storm surge, which is amplified by the funnel effect:

Chesapeake Bay, Delaware Bay, New York Harbor, Narraganset Bay, Buzzards' Bay, most of which have a city at or near the top.

Baltimore, Philly, NYC, Providence, could all have a good-sized inundation, as a result.

Depending on which side the eye passes, Boston is also a poor storm-surge risk.

[MiniMe]

33. It it goes up the Chesapeake, it will probably cause problems

along the Potomac River also. That might swamp Washington, DC. Can't decide if that would be good or bad at this point.

[woodsprite]

17. It could happen tomorrow! -(whoops! wrong station).... n/t

[journalist3072]

19. Well, I live in D.C., and...

It seems like each year, we've been experiencing more and more of the effects of hurricanes.

When we got the reminants of Hurricane Floyd in 1999, my basement flooded for 3 days in a row.

When we experienced Hurricane Isabel, which I think was the worst for us in recent times, they said we would be seeing more incidences like that, in the future.

[AnnNeedIt]

20. NE does not deserve this

We are enforcing auto emissions that mock California so we can't be the major cause of automobile global warming that is causing all this bad weather.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

23. It's not a question whether you "deserve" it or not....

...it's just the law of averages combined with the effects of global warming.

FYI, there is no such thing as "automobile global warming". Global warming consists of many factors, of which vehicle emissions is just a part.

[yellowcanine]

26. Bastardi mixes right wing politics with his weather prognostigations.

"I sincerely hope that the fight is for the betterment of the gift God gave us, Earth — not a hasty effort based on self-guilt that could derail America’s train of freedom."

"America's train of freedom"?????? This, at the end of an article criticising environmentalists for promoting the "politically correct" version of the global warming story. Sounds to me as if Bastardi is the one mixing political philosophy with climate predictions.

http://www.carolinajournal.com/opinions/display_story.html?id=2592

[LynneSin]

27. Any other weather service I'd believe over Accu-Santorium-Weather

If you don't know already, Accuweather has paid for Rick Santorum to bad-mouth the National Weather Service because NWS provides their service for free and Accuweather charges for their service. The NWS is funded by the government, so if they can get Tricky-Rick to help cut funding to the NWS then Accuweather could make a bundle!

[TrogL]

30. Remember Hurricane Hazel

It re-routed a river in Ontario, Canada, thousands of miles from the Atlantic.

[BurgherHoldtheLies]

37. Major hurricane to hit the NE: Choose 'Yes' or 'No'

Gee, a 50-50 forecast...wow, I'm impressed.:eyes:

[hedgehog]

38. Even a "right-wing" forecaster can be correct

Hurricanes do track up the east coast occasionally, so it only makes sense that sooner or later one will. I didn't know about Hazel, I thought the last one was the Long Island storm in 1938. The really bad news is that thousands of people have built out on the beaches and barrier islands since the last big storms. Even more people have moved to coastal cities and suburbs. These people have no idea what to expect, and they built based on historical data. Historical data by definition is now out of date. Due to loss of wet lands, increased intensity of storms, rising sea levels etc, the water is going to rise higher than expected when the storms come. If you thought New Orleans had a bad evacuation plan, take a guess as to what kind of plan a typical Long Island suburb has. If the storm tracks inland like Hazel did, I don't even want to think about the floods that will follow.

[jpak]

39. The 1938 hurricane ripped through NY and New England and killed 600 people

and caused $3.5 billion in damage (today's $$$)

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/wh1938.htm

http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/38hurricane/

Develpment along the NY-NJ-NE coastline will make the next one even more costlier....

[Breeze54]

40. Awe you're all a bunch of worry warts!!

Cripes!! It's friggin' March!! :rofl:
We've been through many hurricanes!
We'll survive!!
My family has a house 2 miles from Race Point
and it's been there since the mid 1800's!
And it's still standing!!
I'm not worried!
But I sure wish spring would show up soon!!