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

Once in a Hundred-Year storm...

[tekrat]

That's funny because the year BEFORE Sandy, we had a "Once in a Hundred Year Storm" hit the northeast. And then next year, the exact same thing happened again, but it was worse.

And this year, I expect the weatherman to say the exact same thing....

Last 700 years: yes, future: not so much

[gweihir]

These records get broken as a matter of routine these days in exactly the way climate sciences has predicted for quite a while now: Things get more extreme and less stable is the main prediction. So while Sandy may have been once in 700 years for the past, it could well be 1 in 50 years or even worse in the future.