Hurricane Sandy Update: 3 of 3 - Northeast Ohio Impact

In my first Hurricane Sandy impact post, we focused on the impact along the Carolina coast tomorrow (Saturday). In the second impact post, the focus shifted to landfall projections from the Delaware Coast to central New Jersey depending on what computer model you look at. Over the last several days, the European Model has handled the evolution and movement of the storm with impeccable accuracy.

What makes this storm so potentially devastating is the favorable environment its entering. This great animation by Dr. Ryan Maue really shows the tight rotation and energy in the upper levels of the atmosphere which over time will translate to very high winds on the eastern flank of the storm.

http://models.weatherbell.com/gfs_pv325k_usa_globe_anim.gif

You see how the trough becomes "negatively tilted" (meaning that instead of the trough orienting itself north to south, it becomes tilted northwest to southeast). So in essence, the trough due to many different atmospheric processes pulls the tropical system back to the west.

High wind warnings for all of Northern Ohio from Monday afternoon through Tuesday. Wind gusts to 60 are possible

Rainfall has already exceeded 2-3" in much of northern Ohio

Another great animation showing the wide scale nature of the hurricane over the last several days

Google has posted a crisis map for New York City and Long Island.
http://google.org/crisismap/2012-sandy-nyc