Hurricane Sandy Nears East Coast

An anonymous reader writes "Scientists have been following and projecting Sandy's path with all the tools at their disposal: ocean buoys, radar and satellite imagery, and computer modeling. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also gathers information from special reconnaissance aircraft, which fly over hurricanes and can drop instruments into them to measure wind speeds, air pressure, temperature, and altitude. The latest data gathered on Hurricane Sandy point to an unprecedented and mighty tempest, scientists say." A couple of our East Coast offices are closed today and people have been told to work from home. Please share your storm stories, and updates while you still have internet access.

Comments

Re:Uhhh.... This is it?

[MickyTheIdiot]

It doesn't take long for the second guessers to arrive, does it?

Sometimes they even show up too early.

See what happens?

[gmuslera]

Started as a minor storm but the press have blown it out of all proportion. Now is a big one.

Re:See what happens?

[slashmydots]

Amen to that! Any news agency with a presence in New York (all of them) turn it into the end of the world. The last time New York had a snow storm, CNN covered it like it was the black death. Meanwhile, Wisconsin got slightly more snow than they did and nobody gave a shit. Seriously, we were out shopping and driving and tailgating Packer games like it was normal weather, seeing as how it was. This is a class 1 hurricane. Time to un-bundle their undees and report on something useful and just pack a goddam umbrella.

Re:See what happens?

[bws111]

Yes, it is 'only' a category one hurricane. That is going to cover ALL of Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Massachusettes, and parts of Virginia, Kentucky, West Virginia, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine with at least tropical storm force winds.

Do you realize how many people live in that area? And, OK, it is 'only' a Category 1 storm, so the most likely effects (away from the coast) is power outages. Except that when the entire mid-Atantic and Northeast regions are covered, there is no help available from neighboring states.

And, oh yeah, the storm surge at NYC is supposed to be 'only' 8 to 11 feet - which has happened never before. Since much of NYCs infrastructure is underground (including, of course, the subways), this is a big deal, regardless of the category of the storm or what similar storms have done elsewhere.

Re:Technology zilch compared to nature

[Daetrin]

Really? So where do you propose we should be moving everyone that is at zero risk from hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, tornadoes, floods, wildfires, and any other natural disasters i'm forgetting about right now?

I don't know about the rest of the world, but in North America we'd pretty much have to move the entire population of Mexico, the US and southern Canada up into the Canadian Shield. Trying to move close to half a billion people into north-east Canada would be a logistics and economic nightmare, and i'm pretty sure the kinds of moves that would be required in other parts of the world would be equally drastic.

Realistically, if we don't want to pack all of humanity into tiny fractions of the earth's surface, we have to accept that almost everywhere people live is going to be subject to the occasional natural disaster. Yes, we should avoid the _worst_ areas and/or have contingency plans for those spots, but we're not going to be able to avoid everything.