“Hurricane Sandy’s devastating storm track is a rare one among hurricanes; a new statistical analysis estimates that the track of the storm — which took an unusual left-hand turn in the Atlantic before slamming into the East Coast — has an average probability of happening only once every 700 years.”
I don’t know. In the Midwest we seem to be getting 1-in-100 Year Floods a lot more frequently than every 100 years: the climate is starting to go crazy.
I think that the article does give the appropriate caviat that the research is based on a “steady state” climate that does not change. Problem is that it’s already changed, and drastically. So what may have been every 700 years might be every 7 years, or every 7 months! :eek:
Sandies have only occurred once every 700 years, therefore nothing can make them occur more frequently. And I was worried that something like Sandy might occur again in my lifetime.
There has been more extreme, bizarre, unprecedented weather here in New England since we arrived three years ago than any native can recollect in their lives. Three hurricanes, a couple more giant soggy messes left over from hurricanes, a massive freak snowstorm that brought the region to a stop in October, and endless thunderstorms in 80+ weather all summer so far. Now a one-week heatwave with temps over 90 and humidity 75% or more. In New England.
So I’m very relieved that many generations of Barbarians will come and go before they need to fear another Sandy.
Yeah. Fargo, ND and Moorhead, MN, seem to prepare for a “100 year flood” yearly now - they’ve had like three in the last 10 years I’ve owned my house. I think they’re beginning to get it; they’ve renovated one of the downtowns entirely and have bought up a lot of land that usually gets flooded so that at least there’s not houses there anymore.
'Course, now that they’ve taken these measures, they probably won’t flood for a hundred years. And thus is the circle of life complete.
Relevant info from a previous thread:
For every 1 degree Celsius rise in the average temperature of the oceans, there will be seven feet of sea level rise, just from the expansion of water due to heating. That doesn’t include Greenland or Antarctica melting. Temperatures are rising, the operative question is at what rate will the oceans get warmer.
Accordingly, don’t buy near sea level.
They say that Sandy’s trajectory was 1 in 700 years, but to what degree of precision? Suppose another hurricane comes along next year and makes landfall 100 miles further north, is that the same track (which will have now happened in consecutive years) or a different track that needs its own statistical analysis? Maybe that’s a 1-in-250 years event.
How many weather events are there that get tracked this way? If there are 100 different flood plains in the U.S., chances are decent that one of them will have its 1-in-100 flood this year. That, by itself, doesn’t mean the weather has gotten more extreme. We just never hear about the vast majority of places that dodge the probabilistic bullet in a given year.
I agree with what others are saying about 1 in a 100 year floods happening every few years, especially Fargo, but I tend to believe that we will not see another Sandy type storm in our lifetime. That was one weird event. Simultaneously flooding a huge portion of the northeast while dumping nearly 3 feet of snow on West Virginia.
As a note, I moved out of Hoboken, NJ, the morning that it hit. The moving truck left at about noon, the flooding started at about 8 PM I think. I was inland in a hotel, so not sure when the bad stuff hit Hoboken.
Time will tell. All I can really say is that if there is another big October storm this year with days of power outtages, the new snarky catch-phrase will be “As Cold and Dark as Halloween in Jersey” :rolleyes: