[h=3]By MIKE ESTERL[/h]Government forecasters warned Hurricane Sandy could deliver a bigger coastal storm surge than Hurricane Irene last year and bring a wide swath of strong winds, heavy rains, snow and flooding to mid-Atlantic states, New England and parts of the Midwest after moving inland.
Hurricane Sandy raged through the Bahamas early Friday after leaving 21 people dead across the Caribbean, following a path that could see it blend with a winter storm and reach the U.S. East Coast as a super-storm next week. Photo: AP Images.
[h=3]2012 Storm Season[/h]
Hurricane Sandy moved through the Bahamas early Friday after leaving 21 people dead across the Caribbean, following a path that could see it blend with a winter storm and hit the U.S. East Coast with a large storm next week. Follow real-time coverage in the 2012 Storm Season stream .
[h=3]Hurricane Sandy Tears Across Cuba[/h]
AFP/Getty ImagesA man rescues some belongings from his house in Santiago de Cuba Thursday after hurricane Sandy rumbled trough parts of the island.
[h=3]Hurricane Tracker[/h]Track the latest Atlantic hurricanes and tropical storms, and look back over past seasons.
The slow-moving storm, packing 80-mile-an-hour winds, is expected to stay far off Florida's coast Friday and remain over the Atlantic Ocean this weekend, before bending westward and making landfall somewhere between Virginia and New England as early as Monday.
Forecasters warned storm surges on the Atlantic coast could eclipse that of Irene, which made landfall in North Carolina. That's partly because Sandy is expected to bend and hit land at a perpendicular angle, unlike Irene, which stayed largely parallel with the coast while moving north. Sunday's full moon, which creates higher tidal waters, is exacerbating coastal flooding risks.
James Franklin, branch chief of the National Hurricane Center, said it is still too early to estimate how high coastal storm surges could reach and which part of the mid-Atlantic or New England could be hardest hit. The storm is still as many as four days away from landfall, making modeling uncertain, and it could shift, he said.
Still, "it's pretty safe" to assume "we're looking at something bigger than Irene," Mr. Franklin told reporters Friday in a conference call. "Somebody is going to get a significant surge event out of this system."
Sandy also could bring 10 inches of rain to coastal areas and 5 to 10 inches inland, dumping as much as two feet of snow in West Virginia's mountainous areas, driving 50 mile-an-hour winds to the Ohio Valley and the potential flooding of rivers in states including Pennsylvania and Delaware.
"Given the fact that this is such a large storm, we expect a significant impact with respect to wind and the potential for surge as it approaches the coast," Louis Uccellini, director of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, told reporters on the same conference call.
Hurricanes and tropical storms typically veer east off the U.S. coast as they move farther north. That isn't expected to happen this time because of a unique "blocking'' pattern involving cold-air systems stretching from Alaska to the north Atlantic.
"This is one of the more blocked systems you'll find," said Mr. Uccellini.
ReutersA woman walks along a jetty in Ponce Inlet, Fla., Friday as Hurricane Sandy passed offshore.
The convergence of weather troughs from the west with Sandy to the east also is expected to produce a slow-moving storm that eventually will work its way into the Great Lakes and Canada.
"It's going to be a long-lasting event of two to three days for a lot of people,'' said Mr. Franklin.
Mr. Uccellini said Sandy has some similarities to the so-called Perfect Storm of 1991, when a nor'easter converged with Hurricane Grace to slam into the East Coast. But the current storm system has a stronger tropical component, while the 1991 storm had colder air, he added.
Sandy raged through the Bahamas early Friday after leaving 29 people dead across the Caribbean.
The storm knocked out power, flooded roads and cut off islands in the Bahamas as it charged through Cat Island and Eleuthera, with authorities reporting one death in the scattered archipelago.
Sandy, which weakened to a Category 1 hurricane Thursday night, caused havoc in Cuba Thursday, killing 11 people in eastern Santiago and Guantanamo provinces as its howling winds and rain toppled houses and ripped off roofs. Authorities said it was Cuba's deadliest storm since July 2005, when Category 5 Hurricane Dennis killed 16 people and caused $2.4 billion in damage.
Sandy also killed one person while battering Jamaica on Wednesday and 16 in Haiti, where heavy rains from the storm's outer bands caused flooding in the impoverished and deforested country.
—Associated Press contributed to this article.Write to Mike Esterl at [email protected]
Hurricane Sandy raged through the Bahamas early Friday after leaving 21 people dead across the Caribbean, following a path that could see it blend with a winter storm and reach the U.S. East Coast as a super-storm next week. Photo: AP Images.
[h=3]2012 Storm Season[/h]
Hurricane Sandy moved through the Bahamas early Friday after leaving 21 people dead across the Caribbean, following a path that could see it blend with a winter storm and hit the U.S. East Coast with a large storm next week. Follow real-time coverage in the 2012 Storm Season stream .
[h=3]Hurricane Sandy Tears Across Cuba[/h]
AFP/Getty ImagesA man rescues some belongings from his house in Santiago de Cuba Thursday after hurricane Sandy rumbled trough parts of the island.
[h=3]Hurricane Tracker[/h]Track the latest Atlantic hurricanes and tropical storms, and look back over past seasons.
The slow-moving storm, packing 80-mile-an-hour winds, is expected to stay far off Florida's coast Friday and remain over the Atlantic Ocean this weekend, before bending westward and making landfall somewhere between Virginia and New England as early as Monday.
Forecasters warned storm surges on the Atlantic coast could eclipse that of Irene, which made landfall in North Carolina. That's partly because Sandy is expected to bend and hit land at a perpendicular angle, unlike Irene, which stayed largely parallel with the coast while moving north. Sunday's full moon, which creates higher tidal waters, is exacerbating coastal flooding risks.
James Franklin, branch chief of the National Hurricane Center, said it is still too early to estimate how high coastal storm surges could reach and which part of the mid-Atlantic or New England could be hardest hit. The storm is still as many as four days away from landfall, making modeling uncertain, and it could shift, he said.
Still, "it's pretty safe" to assume "we're looking at something bigger than Irene," Mr. Franklin told reporters Friday in a conference call. "Somebody is going to get a significant surge event out of this system."
Sandy also could bring 10 inches of rain to coastal areas and 5 to 10 inches inland, dumping as much as two feet of snow in West Virginia's mountainous areas, driving 50 mile-an-hour winds to the Ohio Valley and the potential flooding of rivers in states including Pennsylvania and Delaware.
"Given the fact that this is such a large storm, we expect a significant impact with respect to wind and the potential for surge as it approaches the coast," Louis Uccellini, director of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, told reporters on the same conference call.
Hurricanes and tropical storms typically veer east off the U.S. coast as they move farther north. That isn't expected to happen this time because of a unique "blocking'' pattern involving cold-air systems stretching from Alaska to the north Atlantic.
"This is one of the more blocked systems you'll find," said Mr. Uccellini.
ReutersA woman walks along a jetty in Ponce Inlet, Fla., Friday as Hurricane Sandy passed offshore.
The convergence of weather troughs from the west with Sandy to the east also is expected to produce a slow-moving storm that eventually will work its way into the Great Lakes and Canada.
"It's going to be a long-lasting event of two to three days for a lot of people,'' said Mr. Franklin.
Mr. Uccellini said Sandy has some similarities to the so-called Perfect Storm of 1991, when a nor'easter converged with Hurricane Grace to slam into the East Coast. But the current storm system has a stronger tropical component, while the 1991 storm had colder air, he added.
Sandy raged through the Bahamas early Friday after leaving 29 people dead across the Caribbean.
The storm knocked out power, flooded roads and cut off islands in the Bahamas as it charged through Cat Island and Eleuthera, with authorities reporting one death in the scattered archipelago.
Sandy, which weakened to a Category 1 hurricane Thursday night, caused havoc in Cuba Thursday, killing 11 people in eastern Santiago and Guantanamo provinces as its howling winds and rain toppled houses and ripped off roofs. Authorities said it was Cuba's deadliest storm since July 2005, when Category 5 Hurricane Dennis killed 16 people and caused $2.4 billion in damage.
Sandy also killed one person while battering Jamaica on Wednesday and 16 in Haiti, where heavy rains from the storm's outer bands caused flooding in the impoverished and deforested country.
—Associated Press contributed to this article.Write to Mike Esterl at [email protected]