[ExI] Hurricane Sandy

[BillK]

On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 6:21 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote:
> On the other side of Hurricane Sandy aka Frankenstorm, I've been
> wondering why we still don't have better countermeasures for
> mitigating the damages of these so-called superstorms.  Did anyone
> notice the anomalous path Sandy took, heading almost due West into
> NJ/NY (and through PA, affecting Great Lakes areas)?
>
> I wish they had covered more explanation for how that happened.  I did
> hear one meteorologist refer to it as "unprecedented."
>
>

Predicting the path of a hurricane is not an easy task. They have
improved their computer models and data-collection a lot in the last
year.
IEEE has a good article:
<http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/software/predicting-hurricane-sandy>

You are right to say that usually hurricanes run up the east coast and
Sandy was unusual in turning west into New York.
This was caused by a mid-Atlantic high pressure bubble that pushed
Sandy to the west. But the models didn't agree early on. Some had
Sandy being pushed to the east, so there was uncertainty at first.


BillK