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Last year Irene, this year Sandy. It seems that the Northeast is now getting storms of the caliber that they never saw before. I was looking at a newscast and the weatherman predicted this was the "new normal" for the area because of climate change.
I grew up in the Southeast and hurricanes of Cat 1 were not really that much to worry about so I find it hard to fathom that a Cat 1 could cause so much damage up north. I guess that not being prepared or tested by hurricanes regularly means the infrastructure is not really in place. I mean, was it wise to build subways in a city surrounded by water? Is it wise to have basements along a coast? In the South, nobody has basements and along the Gulf Coast all homes are elevated around 15-20 feet. When they rebuild those Queens/Jersey Shore homes, will they elevate them so they won't be flooded next time?
Then I started to think about what if a Cat 5 hurricane hit NYC like Katrina did to New Orleans? I was thinking there could be millions dead. Just imagine a hurricane that is many times what hit, that's what hit New Orleans back in 2005.
I also remember friends up in the Northeast always saying that "I couldn't live down South because of all the hurricanes." It seems nobody along the East/Gulf coast is immune and they are eating crow.
So my question is, if this is the new normal, is the Northeast going to start adopting some of the building codes of the Gulf Coast (elevating homes, building homes of solid concrete, etc...)?
In any case, I'll be hoping/praying for y'all to recover quickly.
No.
We are in the same weather pattern as we were in th 50's, where we had 9 named storms come up the east coast.
People need to look at facts, not believe hype.
For instance, we were told.....no, promised, that there would be increasing numbers of Cat 5 storms hit the US.
Last year Irene, this year Sandy. It seems that the Northeast is now getting storms of the caliber that they never saw before. I was looking at a newscast and the weatherman predicted this was the "new normal" for the area because of climate change.
I grew up in the Southeast and hurricanes of Cat 1 were not really that much to worry about so I find it hard to fathom that a Cat 1 could cause so much damage up north. I guess that not being prepared or tested by hurricanes regularly means the infrastructure is not really in place. I mean, was it wise to build subways in a city surrounded by water? Is it wise to have basements along a coast? In the South, nobody has basements and along the Gulf Coast all homes are elevated around 15-20 feet. When they rebuild those Queens/Jersey Shore homes, will they elevate them so they won't be flooded next time?
Then I started to think about what if a Cat 5 hurricane hit NYC like Katrina did to New Orleans? I was thinking there could be millions dead. Just imagine a hurricane that is many times what hit, that's what hit New Orleans back in 2005.
I also remember friends up in the Northeast always saying that "I couldn't live down South because of all the hurricanes." It seems nobody along the East/Gulf coast is immune and they are eating crow.
So my question is, if this is the new normal, is the Northeast going to start adopting some of the building codes of the Gulf Coast (elevating homes, building homes of solid concrete, etc...)?
In any case, I'll be hoping/praying for y'all to recover quickly.
There are alot of cities that are low and have subways , London , Hong Kong , Tokyo , Boston , Shenzhen just to name a few....the pump system needs to be upgraded....alot of the road tunnels flooded aswell...
I remember back in the 70's & 80's when Midland beach, South Beach & New Dorp Beach were sparsely built & there were more wet lands than houses. Many of those house were bungalows, quite a few homes that were very close to the beach where built on stilts.
There are alot of cities that are low and have subways , London , Hong Kong , Tokyo , Boston , Shenzhen just to name a few....the pump system needs to be upgraded....alot of the road tunnels flooded aswell...
My Brother in law works for Con-ed. He was telling me that Con-ed installed a $20 million pumping system in the 14th street station that was able to handle 50,000 gallons of water at a time. He said the water rose so quickly at that station the pumps became over taken in 20 minutes. They guys running that station had to run for their lives. In addition to more pumps we need sea walls & levees.
Last year Irene, this year Sandy. It seems that the Northeast is now getting storms of the caliber that they never saw before. I was looking at a newscast and the weatherman predicted this was the "new normal" for the area because of climate change.
This issue is being discussed right now with Professor John Mutter from Columbia University on NY1's program "Inside City Hall", specifically about the implications for NYC
Most damage and deaths are due to Dense forests in the Northeast compared to the south, only a few died in the surge.
Also Sandy covered an area 3.5x the size of Katrinia, the storms pressures where only 14mbs apart at landfall.
By the way 6<1893 (deaths in the City), New Orleans was much less prepared for Katrina than NY was for Sandy.
6/8,500,000 is .00007% or 7 in 10,000,000 of the Population of New York, 1893/350,000 is .5% or 1 in 200. and the Northeast is Woefully unprepared?
Sandy = Cat 1 < Katrina = Cat 5
Imagine if a Cat 5 hit Manhattan, you really think the death toll wouldn't be comparable to Katrina?
Imagine if a Cat 5 hit Manhattan, you really think the death toll wouldn't be comparable to Katrina?
The top gust recorded in New Orleans During Katrina ws comparable to the top gust in New York City during Sandy, also Katrinia made landfall as a Cat3, Andrew was the last Cat 5 Hurricane to make landfall.
Also on the IKE scale (intergrated kenetic Energy) Sandy beats Katrina.
We've been hit with two big hurricanes in the past several decades and after each one the building codes were increased substantially for hurricane resistance. However, the new hurricane preventative construction is only on the new construction so it takes awhile for the new methods of construction to be widespread in the buildings around town. They also won't have time to implement new construction methods before folks will be rebuilding their damaged buildings. However the current building codes are already probably much stiffer than they were when the damaged buildings were built, depending on the age of the damaged buildings, of course.
In 1893 a strong hurricane nicknamed 'The west indian cyclone' made landfall in nyc causing flood waters to reach 6th avenue in Manhattan. It was estimated to have been a cat 3 at landfall with a storm of surge iof nearly 30 ft. If such a storm struck today and it does every 70 years or so, it would spell destruction for the area. Large swaths of the 5 boroughs would be inundated with the rest of us sitting without power.
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