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AFTER KILLING 44 people in the Caribbean, Hurricane Sandy is moving towards the east coast of America and forecasters have predicted an even greater storm than Irene kicked up last year because of a coinciding blast of winter weather.
If the hurricane meets the seasonal ‘nor’easter’ weather system, it would super-charge it, dragging it west onto land to hit Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts and Ohio.
The states are now preparing for tidal surges, power outages, flooding and even some snowfall. However, officials say it is too early to tell exactly when the hurricane will hit land.
“We know somebody is going to get hit. We just cannot say who that somebody is going to be,” said James Franklin, branch chief of the Miami-based National Hurricane Center (NHC), during a telephone press conference Friday.
The nickname Frankenstorm has come from meteorologists because of its occurrence at Hallowe’en, as well as its composition from difference sources.
Sandy is “looking like a very serious storm that could be historic,” said Jeff Masters, meteorology director of the forecasting service Weather Underground. “Mother Nature is not saying, `Trick or treat.’ It’s just going to give tricks.”
Authorities in the states of Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, the US capital Washington and a coastal county in North Carolina declared a state of emergency, directing officials to speed up storm preparations.
-Additional reporting by AP/AFP
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im sure 44 deaths is far from media hype
Sadly true
And we in Ireland complain about the weather, lets be grateful we don’t get any extremes.
True thank God.
Lets see if it loses all its power before it hits land.
I’ll post photos when I get back over there from Sunday night… apparently I’m staying 1/2 mile from the coast… hmmm… maybe not my best idea!
Having experienced these storms in both the Caribbean and the Far East it is impossible to exaggerate their ferocity. Look at the damage Hurricane Charley did in Ireland in 1986 after travelling across the Atlantic some 4000 miles before it struck.
media hype!
Maybe it is maybe it isn’t. After being in The Florida Keys during Hurricane Andrew that narrowly missed us to go on and wipe out Homestead further up Florida it’s far better to be prepared ! A very frightening experience.
Better safe than sorry!
Got caught in hurricane Dennis back in 2005 over in keywest, quite the experience
Jaysus!
It’s like this folks be thankful we don’t get them, a few inches of snow and the whole country shuts down, think what a hurricane would do, we would never recover from it and would be turned into a third world country …
Thicks, Frankenstein has nothing to do with Halloween, He celebrates none of that stuff since he became a “Born Again”
Girl I work with flew to NY yesterday and is due back Thursday, fingers crossed it isn’t too severe
Lord have mercy on the US East Coast.
Good that the worlds biggest consumer / polluter is reaping the most of nature’s backlash.
Sounds like a lot of hot air. (Yuk, yuk, yuk) The storm was weakening and was barely a “hurricane” by definition. As far as a “nor’easter” “supercharging” a hurricane, hyperbole doesn’t make good science.
I seriously hope you are right, but with the landfall of the storm due at the same time as full tide and a new moon the surge is what concerns the authorities with people on the shore… NJ have already started mandatory evacuations from the outlying islands (zoom in on NJ on a map, and wander south – those bits offshore to the south)
This will be nothing more than a wet and windy event… the American press and weather services are renowned for hyperbole…..
…I wish you were right…
I lived in Florida for a few years and these hurricanes can be pretty devastating , katrina was a massive disaster , they pick up strength over warm water and usually are at their most lethal at the point on the shoreline where they hit , they weaken over land….some of the comments here are baffling , we had staff with their homes were completely wiped out in 2005 , try telling them its media hype ! I’m not saying they don’t sensationalise but making idiotic comments and observations from thousands of miles away seems pretty pointless…
Really scary the way the storm’s turning out…. going to smash straight into the States after killing all those people in the Carribbean!! It certainly sounds like it’s something to worry about! And for all those saying the media’s going over the top as usual- look at the way Hurricane Katrina turned out; they thought that was just a minor bit of bad weather too, and it nearly wiped out New Orleans! After that, it’s always better not to take chances!!
have your say