Hurricane Sandy

Thanks for the correction viking! Very sad she was lost. There's quite a story here. I hope they make a movie out of it...the family connection to Fletcher Christian, a beautiful historic ship caught in a monster hurricane, coast guard rescue, etc. It's a time warp story of sorts.

 

I don't think this captain's decisions will escape justified criticism, though. Allowing the ship to be caught anywhere near Cape Hatteras in a hurricane seems like an obviously bad move to me.

 

FYI, really good write-up in this article with lots of good pics of the boat & crew...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...in-dies-vessel-smashed-pieces-Superstorm.html

 

Yes...he made a bad call.

Id also like to hear what people think about this modern practice of giving meteorological phenomenon " slang" names like "perfect storm" or Frankenstorm.
In future when I monitor the Met office forecast on the Sat Com should I be aware off these new and deadly FRANKENSTORMS ?

 

In the US October 31st is Halloween, and Frankenstein is a well known monster. I believe that's how the term "Frankenstorm" came about.

With regard to "perfect storm", this is a long known phenomenon where by sheer chance/luck, a "Noreaster" (snow storm from the north) coincides with southern winds of a hurricane. The resulting collision of storms is a simultaneous snow storm & hurricane that would cause a lot of extra damage.

This storm dumped 20 inches of snow very quickly in Virginia and caused massive flooding.

A movie was made about this perfect storm phenomenon in the north east several years ago...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVwuy-4TzU8

Of course the waves in this movie were much larger than this category 1 hurricane, but you get the idea.

 

Slang...

Did a Hurricane hit the east coast ? Or did a troical storm hit the east coast.

What is the definition of Hurricane ? have metrological terms been changed to suit American media ?

Do SLANG media terms create a " cry wolf " scenario with the public. As in...no problem, we survived a Frankenstorm.

 

Category 1 hurricane = 74-95 mph (64-82 kt 119-153 km/h). This particular storm reached at least 90mph so it was just shy of a Category 2. Clouds on this storm reached 2000 miles across.

Yes: It is a hurricane.

Ref: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutsshws.php

You're in Spain, so as this front goes north, then blows east as usual across Nova Scotia to Europe you'll get the picture. Get your umbrella handy. Batten down the hatches. Put the kayak on the roof of your car. Build an ark.

 

I looked at the weather bouy data and never saw winds above 60 knots. Hence it was a tropical storm ? Perhaps Im wrong and wiser folks saw core wind at hurricane strength.

Storm does not refer to a weather phenomenon that forces you to cancel your picnic...the term has a specific meaning.

Gale...Storm...Hurricane... are the meteo terms

At present over here we have hurricane force 12, not storm or frankenstorm , southerlies forecast for the Adriatic sea. Boatdesign net contributor CDK and Daiquiri are presently battening down the hatches.

 

From http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2012/refresh/SANDY shtml/120954.shtml?

Nws National Hurricane Center Miami Fl Al182012
1100 Am Edt Wed Oct 24 2012

Data From The Hurricane Hunter Aircraft Indicate That Sandy Has
Reached Hurricane Strength​

.
NWS NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL AL182012
500 PM EDT MON OCT 29 2012

THE CONVECTIVE STRUCTURE OF SANDY HAS DETERIORATED TODAY...EVEN AS THE CENTRAL PRESSURE HAS CONTINUED TO SLOWLY FALL...SUGGESTING THAT THE CONVECTION IS NO LONGER DRIVING THE BUS. THE INTENSIFICATION OBSERVED THIS MORNING WAS ASSOCIATED WITH STRONG WINDS OCCURRING TO THE SOUTHWEST OF THE CENTER...OUTSIDE OF THE CENTRAL CORE...AND WAS ALMOST CERTAINLY DUE TO BAROCLINIC FORCING. IN ADDITION...AIRCRAFT DATA INDICATE THAT THERE ARE STRONG TEMPERATURE CONTRASTS VERY NEAR A MODEST RESIDUAL WARM CORE. WATER VAPOR IMAGERY INDICATES THAT SANDY IS BECOMING ABSORBED WITHIN A LARGE MID-LATITUDE CYCLONIC CIRCULATION. ALL OF THESE CONSIDERATIONS LEAD US TO CONCLUDE THAT THE MOST APPROPRIATE CLASSIFICATION AT ADVISORY TIME IS EXTRATROPICAL.​

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I also found this discussion of Hurricane Bob and The Perfect Storm from 1991 interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Atlantic_hurricane_season
I lived in Rockport, MA and worked in Marblehead, MA at the time (for yacht designer Jim Taylor). At my location The Perfect Storm was the more impressive and destructive of the two storms, due mostly to wave height. I watched as The Landing Restaurant and a number of yachts in Marblehead Harbor were destroyed, and watched on television a large house on a bluff in Gloucester fall into the sea.

 

Hmm...once again American SLANG..." convection is driving the bus " ?

I suspect that French navigators are frantically searching their dictionary, while battling 10meter waves , to understand what this met office BUS component is !

Many people in the world go thru great effort to learn the english language. Why confuse their decision making with Frankenstorm Bus gibberish

 

You'll have to take that up with the National Hurricane Center. The next discussion posting describes landfall, and says there were GUSTS to hurricane strength (80 knots). But as I've said before, most of the damage was owing to storm surge. It has now been determined that New York experienced the highest water level ever recorded. The record goes back 200+ years.

 

I've always been frustrated how various regions of the world refer to these big ocean storms. In the west they call them hurricanes, yet elsewhere they call them typhoons & cyclones.



I say we get all the global meteorologists together in a bar, get them drunk, place bets and let them duke it out. The last man standing gets to keep the name.

 

Syntax issues aren't difficult to understand and essentially are irrelevant, assuming you know the difference between American football and soccer.

Sandy came ashore as a post tropical system, which isn't a hurricane in a technical sense, but can pack hurricane force winds. Then again a nor'easter can pack hurricane force winds, but isn't a hurricane either. Sandy currently and as it came ashore yesterday, was a post tropical system converged with a typical nor'easter. This isn't all that uncommon, though it's intensity was. Most of the time a tropical system is torn apart by upper level winds and the "tops" get sheared, effectively killing the storm. Pressure differentials where sufficiently sizable enough in this combination, that shearing forces didn't kill the storm, though they did dramatically weaken it as it came on shore (a good thing).

I would never cook on a Barbie, as I just haven't developed a taste for melted plastic yet, but Australians seem to enjoy their barbies and cook on them often.

 

Several past posts questioned the non technical names being applied to these storms got me thinking about the pros and cons of their use. As long as the professional government meteorology departments refrain from such I see no harm.Such terms as Frankinstorm, Perfect Storm by media, city and state leaders might actually drive home the actual ferocity of incoming weather to the modern enviorimently pampered citizen. Maybe awakening them just enough averting their being the "selected" in the natural selection process.

 

To an extent, this has already been done. The names of these weather events are named by the World Meteorological Organisation. As shown here:
http://kids.earth.nasa.gov/archive/hurricane/names.html

A Typhoon...which is written in roman script, from the Japanese, pronounced Ty-phu-n, again in Roman script. From the Japanese (originally Chinese script) for Big-Wind: 大風

Words/meanings are borrowed from all over the world for all sorts of reasons. The main one being because there is no direct translation.

Hundreds of years ago, no Internet or 24hr TV to inform everyone in Japan, that the storm has a different name in a different region of the world.

Thus, as each name is regional, as PAR eluded to already above. And despite the current season in the US, I am not falling down....it is Autumn time