Day After Tomorrow: One Day After The Landfall By: Maurice Joseph
October 30, 2012
The day was October 31st 1991 when an unnamed nor’easter dubbed The Perfect Storm hit North Eastern, United States and Canada. The damage was extreme and catastrophic and it remains the most infamous storm to hit the North East to date. That is until yesterday when Hurricane Sandy dubbed “Frankenstorm” in keeping with Halloween or “Superstorm Sandy” ravaged The Northeast from Maine all the way south to the Carolinas.
Forming early last week just south of Jamaica, what was tropical storm Sandy headed up North wreaking havoc throughout the Caribbean intensifying to hurricane strength just before making landfall in Jamaica, and category 2 status as it struck Cuba. Damage in the Caribbean is said to be in the millions as over 60 deaths in Jamaica, Haiti, Cuba, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico have been attributed to Sandy.
Early this week it continued on its north, northeast track swamping the Bahamas islands with flood water and causing tidal surges affecting Miami and Ft. Lauderdale causing minor flooding and beach erosion.
By Sunday its track showed the potential for a US landfall and its size grew to immense proportions. From side to side its wind field spanned over 1000 miles. To put that into perspective, when it made landfall it affected one third of the United States, with tropical storm force winds affecting New England, to Mid-Western to Southern states, as far as Maine in the North East to Ohio in the West and Georgia in the South.
Late Saturday night up to late Sunday evening, as the threat of a landfall became imminent, evacuation orders were made by governors of various states and President Obama and Mitt Romney both cancelled their campaigning rallies. For the first time the city that never sleeps would be shut down completely. Wall Street announced its closure for a period of two days, the first time in over 124 years that it has closed due to weather. Mayor Bloomberg shut down all MTA and bus transport by 7:00 and 9:00pm respectively on Sunday night and urged the closure of Bridges and tunnels especially along the Battery Park shoreline. New Jersey governor Chris Christie instated mandatory evacuations at high-risk areas and urged all New Jerseys residents to heed the necessary warnings. In Washington D.C. President Obama came back to the white house where he made an address of the nation and declared states of emergencies for the states in the North Eastern United States.
By late Sunday night the winds began to pick up, with tropical storm gusts of over 50mph being felt along the North Carolina coast up to Boston, Massachusetts, all while the storm was over a whopping 500 miles away. Come Monday morning the scene would be completely different. Ominous dark skies covered the Northeast for miles and miles, the wind began to pick up and so did the surf. The storm surge began eroding beaches along the coast. Atlantic City in New Jersey, where hundreds of casinos were closed and evacuated began to feel the brunt of the storm. Levees were breached and soon the storm surge began flooding the city. Everywhere down to the main streets in downtown were submerged in ferocious currents. Reports of the famous “tall ship” HMS bounty (used in the Pirates of the Caribbean movie) and its crew stranded at sea surfaced, and the National Guard was scrambled to rescue them. All but the Captain was located and rescued and unfortunately the ship sank.
As the storm moved closer ashore the situation seemed worse than what was expected, government officials had to rush to call for mandatory evacuations as it got more and more dire. By mid afternoon tropical storm force winds extended out to Maryland and Pennsylvania, while New Jersey and New York City were feeling the brunt of the hurricane force winds. Battery Park began to see flooding as the New York harbor water breached the sea wall and water began coming in. Coney Island also began seeing flooding.
Out in West Virginia along with high winds, due to a combination of a winter low plus the hurricane system a blizzard warning was in effect for West Virginia and high levels of snowfall was recorded and soon blizzard like conditions were observed. High winds toppled trees and cars, and soon roads became impassable.
By 8pm high tide had begun to rise, this spelled a triple whammy for Manhattan as coupled with normal high tide a full moon was out doubling the sea water height, this acted along with the south west winds pushing water into the Long Island Sound and the Hudson River earlier in the afternoon and a shift in winds pushing the water from the upper New York Bay through the Narrows caused a backlog of water which inundated lower Manhattan, Brooklyn and Upper and Lower East side. Throughout the night the waters just got higher and higher passing 13 feet above normal height making it the record for highest water level rise and flooding in the city’s entire history. Very soon tunnels began to get flooded. Soon the subway stations followed, the reaction with the seawater and the electrical third rail lines in many stations caused power outages and sparked many fires. High winds caused blowouts from transformers and over 8 million residents in 15 states on the east coast are still without power.
Human tragedy didn’t escape Sandy’s wrath as so far over 30 deaths have been reported including a woman electrocuted by stepping into a puddle with a live wire and a woman from Ontario, Canada who died when a tree was felled and landed on her.
So far the total damage done by Sandy cannot be accounted for, but is speculated to be in the billions, the highest ever for the US, after all it did earn it’s name “Frankenstorm.” President Obama is said to be touring the area later this week.
