Hurricane Sandy a 1-in-700-Year Event Says NASA Study

Rebecka writes "Hurricane Sandy, which pelted multiple states in Oct. and created billions of dollars in damage, was a freak occurrence and not an indication of future weather patterns, according to NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies via LiveScience. The study (abstract), which calculated a statistical analysis of the storm's trajectory and monitored climate changes' influences on hurricane tracks, claims that the tropical storm was merely a 1-in-700-year event. 'The particular shape of Sandy's trajectory is very peculiar, and that's very rare, on the order of once every 700 years,' said senior scientist at NASA and study co-author, Timothy Hall. According to Hall, the extreme flooding associated with the storm was also due to the storm's trajectory which was described as being 'near perpendicular.' The storm's unusual track was found to have been caused by a high tides associated with a full moon and high pressure that forced the storm to move off the coast of the Western North Atlantic."

Comments

Re:The problem with Probability...

[fustakrakich]

You know, 700 years ago the Indians were burning lots of fires to send smoke signals. Obviously they caused a climate change that brought the "Sandy" like hurricanes to their shores back then.

Anyway, it's all bullshit. Everybody knows that hurricanes are caused by gays who want to marry horses, or Protestants, take your pick...