Sandy Will Be Historic for Many Reasons. Preparations Should be Complete Today!

It's all about Sandy!

Today and tonight will be a little bit of a throw away with just a shower or two around today and a generally light, but steady rain developing tonight.

Tomorrow and tomorrow night Sandy will have the heaviest impacts across the region. You can see some of the details on the maps sent out. There are almost no words that can fully describe the impacts that this storm will bring about for the area. We have up to 10 feet on the storm surge map. That will cause serious and devastating flooding problems under the best of conditions. The position of the high to the north and the storm moving in will lead to a long fetch with the water piling up over northern New Jersey and into Long Island Sound. The storm may not fully release until it's well inland Monday night or early Tuesday.

This has remnant memories of the "Perfect Storm" scenario with the blocking high pressure to the north. The one fortunate thing is that this storm will be allowed to move inland rather than holding off shore. Rain will lead to flooding to add to the coastal flooding.

Aside from the flooding, wind gusts past hurricane strength will cause serious damage throughout the region. Another aspect of the wind is the direction. The easterly wind actually provides a counter direction wind to the usual strong wind. So rain will soften the ground and the winds normally out of the west has strengthened from that direction will now blow from the east causing more damage as a result. So more trees will fall than average with this wind direction which will cause more power outages.

The wind will really pile the water into the western part of Long Island Sound. The Sound Shore will also have the surge arriving at the time of a full moon and astronomical high tide. Wave damage will be significant from New Haven to Greenwich. Tod's Point normally overun during an astronomical high tide will see that multiplied by a power of 10.

Power will be out for days if not a few weeks. Estimates are that 10 million people in the Northeast will be without power.

On Tuesday the winds will remain strong with the storm over southern Pennsylvania. But the pressure of the storm system will rise quickly with the upper low and surface feature stacking.

This is common with storms diminishing.

Finally on Wednesday this system will weaken enough to cause only a few showers in the area.

Another shower is still possible on Thursday with plenty of clouds around. Then on Friday we'll finally crawl out of the fray with nicer weather.