Thursday, October 25, 2012

Hybrid of Hurricane Sandy/Winter Storm Threatens East Coast

Back in November, 2009, Hampton Roads was hit with what locals call the Nor'Ida storm - a situation where remnants of Hurricane Ida came up the east coast and collided with a northeaster coming down the coast.  The photo above shows what happened to our home in Hampton.  Noe, forecasters are predicting a similar event may occur as Hurricane Sandy moves up the east coast - the only good news for Hampton Roads is that the worse part of the scenario may hit further north hitting New York or New England.   Should Hampton Roads get hit again, the boyfriend and I have done all we can to prepare: a whole house generator and three industrial sump pumps to deal with potential rising water.  Here are highlights from the Virginian Pilot:

Much of the U.S. East Coast has a good chance of getting blasted by gale-force winds, flooding, heavy rain and maybe even snow early next week by an unusual hybrid of hurricane and winter storm, federal and private forecasters say.

Though still projecting several days ahead of Halloween week, the computer models are spooking meteorologists. Government scientists said Wednesday the storm has a 70 percent chance of smacking the Northeast and mid-Atlantic.

Hurricane Sandy in the Caribbean, an early winter storm in the West, and a blast of arctic air from the North are predicted to collide, sloshing and parking over the country's most populous coastal corridor starting Sunday. The worst of it should peak early Tuesday, but it will stretch into midweek, forecasters say.

"It'll be a rough couple days from Hatteras up to Cape Cod," said forecaster Jim Cisco of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration prediction center in College Park, Md. "We don't have many modern precedents for what the models are suggesting."

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. They say it has all the earmarks of a billion-dollar storm.

Cisco said the chance of the storm smacking the East jumped from 60 percent to 70 percent on Wednesday. Masters was somewhat skeptical on Tuesday, giving the storm scenario just a 40 percent likelihood, but on Wednesday he also upped that to 70 percent. The remaining computer models that previously hadn't shown the merger and mega-storm formation now predict a similar scenario.

Needless to say, I hope the forecasters are wrong and that the storm stays far offshore.

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