Hurricane Sandy has already caused her first damage in New York: The subway system will be shut as of 7 p.m. tonight. Meteorologists are scared, so city planners are scared.
For many, the hullabaloo raises memories of Irene, which despite causing $15.6 billion worth of damages in the United States, did not live up to its pre-arrival hype.
By almost all measures, this storm looks like it could be worse: higher winds, a path through a more populated area, worse storm surge, and a greater chance it’ll linger. The atmospherics, you might say, all point to this being the worst storm in recent history.
I’ve been watching weather nerds freak out about a few different graphs over the last several days, which they’ve sent around like sports fans would tweet a particularly vicious hit in the NFL. You don’t want to look, but you also can’t help it.
Ryan Maue, who runs a weather modeling firm, put out this animated GIF of the storm’s approach yesterday. “This is unprecedented –absolutely stunning upper-level configuration pinwheeling #Sandy on-shore like ping-pong ball,” he tweeted. It shows how cold air to the north and west of the storm spin Sandy into the mid-Atlantic coastline. (Nota bene: his models also show very high winds at skyscraper altitudes.)
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