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As many as 50 million Americans living in the Northeast Corridor from Boston to Washington are bracing for the Frankenstorm, the combination of Hurricane Sandy, high tide and a nor’easter, which is likely to create storm surges of up to 11 feet in places that do not normally contend with them. Manhattan, for example. Or Atlantic City. Or Long Island’s south shore. Or Long Island’s NORTH shore, simultaneously. The National Hurricane Center describes it as a “life-threatening” storm surge. The shallowness of the water near the coast will make the storm surge higher, especially in and around the New York Harbor area.
Over 450,000 residents in low-lying areas have been told to evacuate, in New York, New Jersey and Delaware. Over 7,000 flights into and out of the region have been cancelled. Six states and the District of Columbia have declared emergencies. 540 miles of coastline will be affected, a testament to the sheer size of the weather event. The New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ are closed today, as is the New York City transit system, New Jersey Transit, and SEPTA in Pennsylvania. All non-essential federal offices are closed as well.
There are also political implications. Maryland shut down early voting. In Virginia, Senate candidate Tim Kaine is asking his supporters to pull up all their yard signs, lest they turn into projectiles with the high winds.
First and foremost, we have a dangerous event that hopefully will cause no loss of life and the minimum possible damage. But when that stock exchange reopens, expect the market to dip. And the near-term result for the Northeast will probably be a continuation of the mysterious economic collapse there. In the near term, hurricanes can actually increase investment, as things need to get rebuilt. But the overall impact is pretty negative. Businesses shut down and some of them cannot restart right away. Construction is pulled forward but taken from other sources. And there are the potential insurance company losses, and associated impact. And where are most of those insurance companies headquartered? Why, the Northeast. All told, you’d rather not have a superstorm in your backyard, from an economic or any other standpoint.
But weather patterns like these will continue in an era of climate change, and at some point you have to stop calling them “once in a lifetime” events and start accounting for them, unless you’re prepared to mitigate the warming of the planet. That’s the choice, not between action and inaction. There’s a cost to inaction, and right now it’s hovering off the Atlantic coast.
Keep checking the National Hurricane Center and Reuters for updates.
16 Comments
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From the look of it, this storm is on the very worst trajectory.
God must hate Yankees.
Please, God, please let that not be true. Some of us are living in places that are not our ancestral lands.
A pretty fair assessment, I would say.
Much of the coverage has (rightly) focused on the threats to the coast.
But dropping 12-18″ of rain on mountainous valleys in WV, PA, the Southern Tier and Catskills of NY
and the Green and White Mountains in VT/NH would be devastating.
Last year, Tropical Storm Lee really messed up Binghamton.
I’ll make another pitch for the Frontline piece on why politicians don’t talk about climate change, “Climate of Doubt.” Sobering. A tragic loss of dialog.
Of course we know who financed the “Doubt.”
Thanks, I am going to watch that later today. My son was to fly on business to Philly, but it was all canceled. I’m sighing with relief.
Scary stuff but as a force of nature I’d put human ignorance right up there against it.
Climate change will make this event commonplace weather it’s good for corporate profit or not.
The real bottom line
{{chuckle}}
thanks for repeating freeman’s #7 — so subtle, yet perfect.
freeman: you win comment of the day for sure!
Maybe I should have speculated God hates Wall $treet?
Good luck to everyone who’s in the way of this thing.
I’m disappointed in myself for adopting the whole God-Hate meme.
Unintended consequence of our current struggles.
climate change notwithstanding, the location of this country has made it susceptible to the most violent weather in the world. It’s always been the case. Read a history of weather events the last 400 years in the country. No one gets remotely close to the number of tornadoes that occur and that has always been the case. The Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean an open pipeline to the Arctic in the winter etc, Lake Effect snows in the lee of the Great Lakes occur to the extent that they do here nowhere else in the world.
I think it’s a mistake to play the “climate change” card every time some weather occurs in this country. It’s about as honest as Darrell Imhofe claiming “see, no climate change” during a January snowstorm. Read the history of weather events in this country. violent weather is a significant part of this nation’s history and always has been.
it’s all Allah’s fault, watt4. /s
It seems to have a lot to do with the shape of North America, which is a little like a cone with two NS mountain ranges to funnel weather down from the far North and up from the Gulf.
Sure I’m certain that the fact that the latest studies raise the real possibility of no summer Arctic ice within as little as three years and a once in a generation drought over the last two years in the bread basket, where our food comes from, are just coincidences./ snark
Perhaps, like our corporate presidential candidates we shouldn’t bother bringing up that as a result of one third of human created carbon emissions settling into the oceans and irreparably changing the PH scientists are predicting a mass extinction event in the worlds oceans unseen in human history within a few decades or that half of all species will vanish within the century.
Right.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmfcJP_0eMc
Sorry scrambler , I grew up in new york and there was not a single tornado or storm of this magnignitude the entire nearly twenty years I lived there, as far as I can remember.
Now, over the last couple years, tornados occur regularly in the North East.
As the weather girl says in the link I posted above we are heading into the 329th consecutive month with the temperature above the global average for the 20th century .
That isn’t clear enough ?