Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg put on one of his most effective calm-inducing sweaters, and did his best to assuage fears about what will happen over the next few days as FRANKENSTORM bares down on the East Coast. But the hybrid hurricane/winter storm is coming together as forecast, according to weather experts, and The Weather Channel's Bryan Norcross thinks Bloomberg downplayed the severity of the storm too much: at his "incomprehensibly inexplicable news conference:" "But to play down the biggest storm to come along in years—if the forecast is even close—seems bizarrely out of character. There's no upside in this everything-is-rosy approach...The normally well-oiled machine that is the Bloomberg administration seems to have slipped a communications cog."
"Sandy the super-unusual, combo hurricane/nor'easter on the unheard-of track is coming together as forecast," Norcorss wrote, referring to computer models of the storm that have been entirely accurate so far. "Those same reliable computer models are saying that Combo Sandy is going to get reinvigorated by the jet stream while still getting energy from the Gulf Stream tomorrow and Monday, and get stronger and bigger. And then pounce on the Northeast." Norcross says that a full moon on Monday night, coinciding with possibly record storm surges, could raise the ocean level 4 to 8 feet above normal.
All of which is to say that while Bloomberg's approach to this storm thus far HAS kept people pretty calm, it has not instilled a sense of the seriousness of the weather phenomenon. And lulling people into a sense of security is not what Norcross thinks people need right now: "The forecast calls for a massive, destructive storm to affect tens of millions of people. If the forecast is wrong, hooray. But so far it's been right, and the odds are this is going to be really bad for a lot of people. Everybody's goal should be to be sure that as many people as possible are as ready and aware as they can be."
Because it's not just Hurricane Sandy hitting us—it's the early winter storm, arctic air from the north, high tides and the chance of snow all combined. "'Frankenstorm' is the right name for Sandy, and indeed for many other storms and droughts and heat waves now," said enviornmentalist Bill McKibben. "They’re stitched together from some spooky combination of the natural and the unnatural. Some state will doubtless bear the brunt of this particular monster, but it also will do its damage to everyone’s state of mind."
It seems important to note this isn't just the opinion of one or two rogue weatherman hellbent on keeping their golf secrets from you: “This is really going to be a huge storm and something unprecedented in meteorological terms,” AccuWeather forecaster Marshall Moss told the Daily News. “This storm will affect millions and cost billions.” “This will be a storm very few people have experienced in their lifetime,” AccuWeather meteorologist Mark Paquette told the Post, adding that the storm will be much more powerful than Irene.
We'll have more up-to-the-minute coverage on the FRANKENSTORM as the day progresses—you should expect a decision about whether they will shut down the MTA to come sometime this afternoon. Bloomberg will also update the city on the storm again at 11 a.m.—considering he said yesterday there wouldn't be one until 6 p.m. today, we expect there may be some important stuff there.
