Only Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was worse.įlorida has not suffered a storm so fatal since the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, which killed over 400 people and racked up wind speeds of 185mph/298kph – the strongest storm to ever strike the US. Then, in late September, Hurricane Ian struck Cuba, Florida and South Carolina with a vengeance, causing the deaths of over 130 people in the US and five in Cuba, making it the second deadliest storm to make landfall in the continental US in the 21 st century. Until the formation of Hurricanes Danielle and Earl in early September, the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season had got off to an unusually quiet start, with the lowest activity in the Atlantic for 25 years and a complete absence of named storms in August, in contrast to the 10 that occurred the same month in 2021. Finally, the storm was massive in geographical area, as well as slow-moving, meaning it could deliver more sustained damage over a large area.” On top of that, it was a full moon, which raises high tides along the Eastern Seaboard by about 20%. “Superstorm Sandy then hit the New York Metro area during high tide, which dramatically increased the height of the storm surge. “I nstead, an unusual weather pattern forced it to pivot ‘left’ towards the coast, which maximized the winds and storm surge directed at the shores of Long Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey. “Superstorm Sandy had been widely expected by weather modelers to travel north-east out into the Atlantic, which is generally typical of hurricanes in the region, rather than hitting the US,” says Andrew Higgins, Technical Manager, Allianz Risk Consulting at AGCS. The New York Stock Exchange closed for two days during prolonged power outages that lasted for weeks in some areas of the region, and the eerily dark skyline of Manhattan became an enduring image of the catastrophe.Ī number of factors converged to make Hurricane Sandy a ‘superstorm’ – a term used for particularly intense storms that defy conventional classification – with some commentators going so far as to label it a ‘franken-storm’. Most of the Eastern Seaboard of the US was affected, with a storm surge in New York City that flooded the subway system and parts of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Staten Island. On its deadly path, it left 70% of Jamaican residents without power, caused catastrophic rain and mudslides in Haiti, inundated the streets of the Dominican Republic capital Santo Domingo, and damaged the historic city of Santiago in Cuba. The tempest then blew through the Bahamas and weakened a little before regrouping to take its infamous ‘left turn’ and slamming into New Jersey, US, on October 29. Two days later it had intensified to a Category 1 hurricane and made landfall in Kingston, Jamaica, before moving on to strike Cuba as a Category 3, with wind speeds of 105mph. On October 22, 2012, a tropical wave off the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua strengthened into a tropical depression.
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