Worst Storm in 100 Years Seen for Northeast U.S.
Hurricane Sandy will probably grow into a “Frankenstorm” that may become the worst to hit the U.S. Northeast in 100 years if current forecasts are correct.
Oct. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy, a Democrat, talks about the state's preparation for Hurricane Sandy, fiscal policy and the job growth outlook. Malloy talks with Betty Liu on Bloomberg Television's "In the Loop." (Source: Bloomberg)
A driver maneuvers his classic American car along a wet road as a wave crashes against the Malecon in Havana, Cuba, on Oct. 25, 2012. Hurricane Sandy blasted across eastern Cuba on Thursday as a potent Category 2 storm and headed for the Bahamas after causing at least two deaths in the Caribbean. Photographer: Ramon Espinosa/AP Photo
Residents evacuate their home as waves from Hurricane Sandy crash in the Caribbean Terrace neighborhood of eastern Kingston, Jamaica, on Oct. 24, 2012. Photographer: Collin Reid/AP Photo
Sandy may combine with a second storm coming out of the Midwest to create a system that would rival the New Englandhurricane of 1938 in intensity, said Paul Kocin, a National Weather Service meteorologist in College Park, Maryland. The hurricane currently passing the Bahamas has killed 21 people across the Caribbean, the Associated Press reported, citing local officials.
“What we’re seeing in some of our models is a storm at an intensity that we have not seen in this part of the country in the past century,” Kocin said in a telephone interview yesterday. “We’re not trying to hype it, this is what we’re seeing in some of our models. It may come in weaker.”
The hybrid storm may strike anywhere from the Delaware- Maryland-Virginia peninsula to southern New England. The current National Hurricane Center track calls for the system to go up Delaware Bay and almost directly over Wilmington, Delaware, just southwest of Philadelphia, on Oct. 30-31.
The hurricane center warns the track is subject to change.
Sandy’s Impact
“Users are reminded to not focus on the details of the track forecast late in the period, as Sandy is expected to bring impacts to a large part of the U.S. East Coast early next week,” the center said.
A tropical-storm watch was issued from Savannah River northward to Oregon Inlet in North Carolina, the NHC said in an advisory. A tropical storm warning is in effect for Florida’s east coast from Ocean Reef to Flagler Beach. A storm watch means tropical storm conditions are possible within the region, a warning means tropical storm conditions are expected.
As of 8 a.m. New York time, Sandy was a Category 1 hurricane with winds of 80 miles (129 kilometers) per hour, down from 100 mph earlier, according to the hurricane center in Miami. It was 15 miles east of Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas and 480 miles south-southeast of Charleston, South, Carolina, moving northwest at 10 mph.
“If the storm follows the current hurricane center forecast, we are looking at over $5 billion in damage,” Chuck Watson, director of research and development at Kinetic Analysis Corp. in Silver Spring, Maryland, said yesterday.
Watson said the track may change quite a bit between now and early next week. An accurate assessment of potential damage from wind and rain probably can’t be made until late this week.
Weakening Insignificant
Sandy’s apparent weakening doesn’t accurately predict the storm it may become, said Matt Rogers, president of Commodity Weather Group LLC in Bethesda, Maryland. Computer models suggest the hurricane may transform into a hybrid system over the weekend because of another storm moving in from the Midwest.
“When the storm phases with the energy from the west, it is forecast to deepen rapidly,” Rogers said. “Indeed, it is expected to continue weakening until phasing really takes place late Sunday into early Monday.”
The 1938 hurricane killed more than 500 people after crossing Long Island and batteringConnecticut and Rhode Island.
“We can say even now our worst fears may be realized,” Kocin said. “If we were seeing what we’re seeing today one day out, we would really be shouting the alarms.”
States Prepare
Governments along the East Coast are preparing for Sandy’s impact. New York GovernorAndrew Cuomo directed state agencies to monitor the storm and Massachusetts’s Emergency Management Agency warned residents to expect the worst.
New York City has a 55 percent chance of winds of at least 39 mph by Oct. 30, according to estimates by Tropical Storm Risk, a consortium of experts on insurance, risk management and climate supported by the U.K. government.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the city was taking routine precautions at this stage.
“A good message to everybody is you should always have a ‘go’ plan,” he said at a news conference yesterday. “Particularly if you live near the water in a low area, you may have to be evacuated. I wouldn’t plan on it today. Listen to the radio and if necessary follow the instructions.”
The mayor is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company ofBloomberg News.
U.S. Utilities
Utilities along the East Coast were monitoring the storm. Nine mid-Atlantic power companies held their first conference call Oct. 24 to discuss how crews will be dispatched to the hardest-hit areas, Myra Oppel, a spokeswoman for Pepco, Washington’s electric utility, said yesterday in an interview.
Pepco retained 400 contractors already working on its system so they’d be available if the storm hits that area, Oppel said. New Jersey’s Public Service Electric & Gas Co. prepared sandbags to protect substations.
Exelon Corp. (EXC)’s Baltimore Gas & Electric urged its 1.2 million power customers in central Maryland to prepare for power failures and flooding. “We’re taking this extremely seriously,” Robert Gould, a utility spokesman, said in an interview yesterday.
The system crossed Jamaica Oct. 24 and Cuba yesterday, tracking north to the central Bahamas, where a hurricane watch was posted for many of the islands.
Winds of at least 74 mph extend 35 miles from Sandy’s core, while gusts of 39 mph reach out 275 miles. The distance from Freeport, Bahamas, to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is 94 miles.
On Jamaica, 70 percent of the island lost power, roofs were torn from homes and roads were blocked by downed trees and floods as Sandy roared ashore, according to Air Worldwide.
Tom Larsen, senior vice president and product architect at Eqecat Inc., a risk modeler in Oakland, California, said yesterday he doesn’t expect Sandy to be worse than Irene. That storm struck the East Coast in August 2011, killing at least 45 people and causing at least $15.8 billion in damage, according to the hurricane center.
More than a Dozen Nuclear Plants Near Hurricane Sandy’s Path Brace for Impact
Oct 27, 2012
Bloomberg reports:
“Because of the size of [Hurricane Sandy], we could see an impact to coastal and inland plants,” Neil Sheehan, a spokesman based in Philadelphia for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said by phone today. “We will station inspectors at the sites if we know they could be directly impacted.”
The NRC met earlier today to discuss the necessary precautions to take for the storm, Sheehan said. Plants must begin to shut if wind speeds exceed certain limits, he said.
As of 2 p.m. New York time, Sandy had winds of 75 miles (121 kilometers) per hour, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. It was about 430 miles south-southeast of Charleston, South Carolina, moving north at 7 mph.
The current Hurricane Center track calls for the system to come ashore just south of Delaware Bay on Oct. 30.
Reuters provides a list:
The following lists the nuclear reactors and utilities in Sandy’s potential path.
While we don’t foresee any problems, the risk of nuclear accident in the U.S. is actually much greater than it was in Japan before Fukushima.
For example, fuel pools in the United States store an average of ten times more radioactive fuel than stored at Fukushima, and have virtually no safety features.
Let’s review the list and look at examples of problems experienced by the nuclear plants in Hurricane Sandy’s path:
- Brunswick experienced a reactor coolant system leak last year
- Surry has recently been plagued by problems with the coolant system, valves and damage from a tornado
- North Anna leaked tritium last year after an earthquake shook the plant and shifted around a gigantic radioactive storage cask
- Calvert Cliffs was knocked offline by the last hurricane
- Hope Creek has suffered security problems, has the same design as the Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1, has “some of the same issues with above-ground storage of spent fuel rods as Fukushima” and “was designed to withstand certain major weather events but we need to look at the potential impacts of more extreme events, especially … sea level rise and flooding”
- Peach Bottom purportedly has a defective design and has been plagued by various problems
- Limerick has suffered electrical and other issues
- Three Mile Island suffered another leak in the cooling system last month
- Susquehanna has been hit with one problem after another
- Oyster Creek has been plagued with electrical and other problems
- Indian Point is widely recognized as one of the nation’s worst nuclear plants. If Indian Point melted down, it could close New York City for years, and cost half a trillion dollars or more
- Millstone’s vulnerability is shown by the fact that it was shut down due to warm seawater
- Pilgrim has numerous structural problems. And see this. Pilgrim’s spent fuel pools contain more radioactive cesium than released by Fukushima, Chernobyl and all nuclear bomb tests combined
- Vermont Yankee – which has around 10 times more spent fuel rods than any of the individual Fukushima reactors – leaked tritium
It’s not surprising that there have been problems at all of these nuclear plants. After all, the U.S. has 23 reactors which are virtually identical to Fukushima. The archaic uranium reactor designs developedmore than 40 years ago are only good for making bombs.
Most American nuclear reactors are old. They are aging poorly, and are in very real danger of melting down. And yet the NRC is relaxing safety standards at the old plants. And see this.
Indeed, while many of the plants are already past the service life that the engineers built them for, the NRC is considering extending licenses another 80 years, which former chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority and now senior adviser with Friends of the Earth’s nuclear campaign David Freeman calls “committing suicide”.
Comments
Look how they hypted the last storm that went by florida it was a tropical storm right up till it hit, and they were compairing it to Katrina LOL this one is a Cat 1 and over cold water. and there still hyping the crap for it, to sell batterys and supplys. alot of rain with it may do some flooding. Cat. #1 people !!!!
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Let our prayers go out to all those affected.
Namaste.