Improved storm surge forecasts are also on the way in the next couple of years, Uccellini says, a needed improvement due to the tremendous damage that storm surge causes: It was Sandy's monstrous storm surge that wreaked the most havoc in New Jersey.Īlso, Sandy forced the weather service to change the way that it forecasts hurricanes. Congress' "Sandy Supplemental bill" earlier this year.)
Sandy hurricane track upgrade#
(Shepherd is referring to the $97 million that the weather service received to upgrade its forecasts, computer models and research budgets from the U.S. "Sandy helped to raise this issue and now the weather service has received support to help in this matter." the American model performance probably helped to bring into focus that our weather assets are national assets, like aspects of homeland security or defense," Shepherd said. model at first picking up Sandy's unusual forecast track. However, there is admittedly room for improvement, especially in the American weather models, as it was the main European weather model that did a better job than the top U.S. Through our actions, countless lives were saved in New Jersey, New York, Long Island and New England." This forecast allowed the weather service to warn emergency managers about the storm threat well ahead of time: "We certainly got people to act in the right way in terms of evacuations, closing subways, getting trains repositioned, and so on," said Uccellini. "The models nailed the very unusual 'hard left," Shepherd said. It was this area of high pressure that prevented, or "blocked" Sandy from moving out to sea, instead driving it back toward the U.S. Marshall Shepherd, president of the American Meteorological Society and professor at the University of Georgia.Ī week before Sandy hit land, Shepherd said, weather models picked up on a very complex interplay among the hurricane, a developing storm over the U.S., and an area of high pressure over the North Atlantic. weather model a while to come on board: "Sandy taught us that our weather models are pretty good," said J. The computer models meteorologists use to forecast weather eventually came together to forecast Sandy's weird path, though it took the main U.S. Sandy killed at least 117 people and caused $50 billion in damage in the U.S., making it the second-costliest weather disaster in American history behind only Hurricane Katrina, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In fact, in more than 100 years of weather records, "this is the only one that turned back to the west," noted National Weather Service director Louis Uccellini.
How unprecedented? "We looked into the tracks of past hurricanes, and there's not a single track like Sandy," according to Peter Hoeppe, head of geo risks research with global insurance firm Munich Re. One year ago this weekend, as Hurricane Sandy roared up the East Coast, it was about to make its unprecedented turn to the west, heading for its ferocious and tragic landfall in New Jersey as a "Superstorm" on Oct. It's the most infamous left turn in weather history.
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