After Hurricane Sandy hit, experts announced it was a 500 year storm. As always, they were lying. It was actually a 50 year storm, and other storms like the 1821 Norfolk Long Island hurricane were much more powerful.
In the months following Sandy many experts told us that Hurricane Sandy was a very unusual event. It was unusual in terms of its westward storm track, its interaction with the jet stream, the high tide, and how it intermingled with the continental weather systems. They tell us that the probability of a similar storm taking the same perpendicular track as Sandy is at least one in 500 years. Once in 500 years is misleading. Although Sandy was unusual in a meteorological sense, it wasn’t a particularly intense storm and lacked the widespread high winds and rainfall that can occur with a Northeast hurricane. It’s highly unlikely that we will see a hurricane with the same characteristics as Sandy. However it’s very likely (1 in 50 years)
Nearly 200 years ago, a powerful hurricane decimated the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast United States. Packing wind gusts of over 156 miles per hour, the Norfolk Long Island Hurricane of 1821 surged up the Eastern Seaboard creating chaos and wreaking havoc from the Outer Banks of North Carolina all the way up to the Boston metropolitan area. If this hurricane was measured by today’s standards, it would be a strong Category 4 storm — unlike anything the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast have recently seen or experienced. In comparison, Hurricane Sandy, with its unique track, 1,000-mile-wide wind field, and low central pressure, pushed record-breaking storm surge into the New York and New Jersey coasts, destroying businesses, homes, and lives in a short 24-hour period. But for all the devastation and damage that Hurricane Sandy brought, its intensity at landfall, measured by 1-minute maximum sustained winds, was equivalent to a weak Category 1 hurricane. Other events in recent years (Irene, Isabel, Gloria, and Bob), while significant, weakened prior to landfall, coming onshore as either Category 1 or Category 2 hurricanes, and not the major hurricanes originally anticipated and feared. If the 1821 Hurricane were to happen today, it would cause 50% more damage than Sandy and potentially cause more than $100 billion in property losses stemming from storm surge and wind damage.
media.swissre.com/documents/the_big_one_us_hurricane_web2.pdf
The storm flooded Manhattan as far north as Canal Street
NYC Hazards: NYC Hurricane History
If that storm hit today, it would have been weeks or months before planet destroying fossil fuel powered electricity was restored.
David A. Robinson, the New Jersey state climatologist at Rutgers University, said there’s no question the 1821 hurricane was a devastating storm, and it likely would “far exceed Sandy” if it arrived today.
Robinson, the state climatologist, said “if you had 90 mph sustained winds in this state (today), the damage would be just remarkable. It would be weeks, if not months, before the power grid would be restored in this state. That’s without question.”
Sandy vs 1821 hurricane
The only thing that saved Manhattan from being destroyed was that, unlike Sandy, the storm came in at low tide.
4 Sep 1821
Whenever climate experts make claims like 500 and 1,000 year events, it is safe to assume they are lying.
Governor Cuomo wants to reduce the availability of fossil fuels in New York by 50% by 2030. Why would anyone vote for someone who wants to ruin their life?
