Forecasters warn East Coast about `Frankenstorm'

WASHINGTON (AP) — All the spare parts appear to be com­ing together to cre­ate what fore­cast­ers are call­ing “Franken­storm,” a mon­ster com­bi­na­tion of high wind, heavy rain, extreme tides and maybe snow that could cause havoc along the East Coast just before Hal­loween next week.

Hur­ri­cane Sandy, hav­ing blown through Haiti and Cuba on Thurs­day, con­tin­ues to bar­rel north. A win­try storm is chug­ging across from the West. And frigid air is stream­ing south from Canada.

And if they meet Tues­day morn­ing around New York or New Jer­sey, as fore­cast­ers pre­dict, they could cre­ate a big wet mess that set­tles over the nation’s most heav­ily pop­u­lated cor­ri­dor and reaches as far inland as Ohio.

With experts expect­ing at least $1 bil­lion in dam­age, the peo­ple who will have to clean it up aren’t waiting.

Util­i­ties are lin­ing up out-of-state work crews and can­cel­ing employ­ees’ days off to deal with the power out­ages. From county dis­as­ter chiefs to the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, emer­gency offi­cials are warn­ing the pub­lic to be pre­pared. And Pres­i­dent Barack Obama was briefed aboard Air Force One.

“It’s look­ing like a very seri­ous storm that could be his­toric,” said Jeff Mas­ters, mete­o­rol­ogy direc­tor of the fore­cast­ing ser­vice Weather Under­ground. “Mother Nature is not say­ing ‘trick-or-treat.’ It’s just going to give tricks.”

National Oceanic and Atmos­pheric Admin­is­tra­tion fore­caster Jim Cisco, who coined the nick­name Franken­storm, said: “We don’t have many mod­ern prece­dents for what the mod­els are suggesting.”

Gov­ern­ment fore­cast­ers said there is a 90 per­cent chance — up from 60 per­cent two days ear­lier — that the East will get pounded start­ing Sun­day and stretch­ing past Hal­loween on Wednes­day. Things are expected to get messier once Sandy, a very late hur­ri­cane in what has been a remark­ably quiet sea­son, comes ashore, prob­a­bly in New Jersey.

Coastal areas from Florida to Maine will feel some effects, but the storm is expected to vent the worst of its fury on New Jer­sey and the New York City area, which could see around 5 inches of rain and gale-force winds close to 40 mph. East­ern Ohio, south­west­ern Penn­syl­va­nia, west­ern Vir­ginia and the Shenan­doah Moun­tains could get snow.

And the storm will take its time leav­ing. The weather may not start clear­ing in the mid-Atlantic until the day after Hal­loween and Nov. 2 in the upper North­east, Cisco said.

“It’s almost a week­long, five-day, six-day event,” he said from a NOAA fore­cast cen­ter in Col­lege Park, Md. “It’s going to be a wide­spread, seri­ous storm.”

It is likely to hit dur­ing a full moon, when tides are near their high­est, increas­ing the risk of coastal flood­ing. And because many trees still have their leaves, they are more likely to top­ple in the event of wind and snow, mean­ing there could be wide­spread power out­ages last­ing to Elec­tion Day.

East­ern states that saw black­outs that lasted for days after last year’s freak Hal­loween snow­storm and Hur­ri­cane Irene in late August 2011 are already pres­sur­ing power com­pa­nies to be more ready this time.

Asked if he expected util­i­ties to be more pre­pared, Mass­a­chu­setts Gov. Deval Patrick responded: “They’d bet­ter be.”

Jer­sey Cen­tral Power & Light, which was crit­i­cized for its response to Irene, noti­fied employ­ees to be ready for extended shifts. In Penn­syl­va­nia, PPL Corp. spokesman Michael Wood said, “We’re in a much bet­ter place this year.”

Some have com­pared the tem­pest to the so-called Per­fect Storm that struck off the coast of New Eng­land in 1991, but that one didn’t hit as pop­u­lated an area. Nor is this one like last year’s Hal­loween storm, which was merely an early snowfall.

“The Per­fect Storm only did $200 mil­lion of dam­age and I’m think­ing a bil­lion,” Mas­ters said. “Yeah, it will be worse.”

As it made its way across the Caribbean, Sandy was blamed for at least four deaths in Haiti and Jamaica. The 18th named storm of the Atlantic hur­ri­cane sea­son hit the Bahamas after cut­ting across Cuba, where it tore roofs off homes and dam­aged frag­ile cof­fee and tomato crops.

Norje Pupo, a 66-year-old retiree in Hol­guin, was help­ing his son clean up early Thurs­day after an enor­mous tree top­pled in his garden.

“The hur­ri­cane really hit us hard,” he said. “As you can see, we were very affected. The houses are not poorly made here, but some may have been damaged.”

Posted by Randa Wagner on Oct 25 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.