7, 2012 - Hurricane Sandy Changes Coastline in New Jersey Jenni Evans, Bryan Stiles, Brian McNoldy, and Alexander Fore contributed to this feature. "The windfield of Katrina fits this pattern, but for Sandy the weakest winds are to the east-a hint that Sandy has already begun interacting with a system to its northeast and a blocking high to its northeast," noted Penn State meteorologist Jenni Evans, State College, Penn.ĭata courtesy of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's QuikSCAT and the Indian Space Research Organization OceanSat-2 missions. For tropical cyclones in the northern hemisphere, the strongest winds are usually just east of the eye amidst a ring of violent thunderstorms called the eyewall. "When that boils down to storm surge, Katrina was capable of generating a locally higher surge, but Sandy was capable of generating a destructive surge over a larger length of coastline."Īnother difference is the location of the strongest winds. "Katrina's winds were more intense, but they covered less area," said Brian McNoldy, a University of Miami meteorologist who authored a Washington Post article explaining why Sandy's storm surge caused so much damage. For Sandy, winds of that intensity stretched 1,500 kilometers (900 miles). For Katrina, winds over 65 kilometers per hour stretched about 500 kilometers (300 miles) from edge to edge. The most noticeable difference is the extent of the strong wind fields. A map of Hurricane Katrina's winds was made from similar data acquired on August 28, 2005, by a radar scatterometer on NASA's retired QuickSCAT satellite. A map of Sandy's winds produced with data from a radar scatterometer on the Indian Space Research Organization's (ISRO) Oceansat-2, showed the strength and direction of Sandy's ocean surface winds on October 28, 2012. Their strongest winds generally weaken during this process, but occasionally a transitioning storm retains hurricane force winds, as was the case with Sandy.Ī pair of wind maps illustrated some of the differences. So when tropical cyclones become extra-tropical, their wind and cloud fields expand dramatically. Extra-tropical cyclones also tend to be asymmetric, with broad wind and cloud fields shaped more like commas than circles. While tropical cyclones draw their energy from warm ocean waters, extra-tropical cyclones are fueled by sharp temperature contrasts between masses of warm and cool air. The names sound similar, but there are fundamental differences between the two types of storms. But as the storm moved northward, it merged with a weather system arriving from the west and started transitioning into an extra-tropical cyclone. Sandy had similar characteristics while it was blowing through the tropics. Like most tropical cyclones, Katrina was a warm-core storm that drew its energy from the warm waters of the tropical Atlantic Ocean. Katrina was a textbook tropical cyclone, with a compact, symmetrical wind field that whipped around a circular low-pressure center. But from a meteorological perspective, the storms were very different. Both storms flooded major cities, cut electric power to millions, and tore apart densely populated coastlines. The scenes of devastation and wreckage that Hurricanes Sandy (2012) and Katrina (2005) left behind were tragically similar. 9, 2012 - Comparing the Winds of Sandy and Katrina NASA Wallops Recovery Continues from Hurricane Sandy Hurricane Sandy removed about 700 feet of protective berm and about 20 percent of the beach protecting Wallops Island, home to NASA Wallops' launch pads and launch support facilities. Tropical-storm-force winds extended as far inland as the central and southern Chesapeake Bay as Hurricane Sandy closed in for landfall. 29, 2012, the National Hurricane Center reported tropical-storm-force winds were occurring along the coasts of southern New Jersey, Delaware and eastern Virginia. The Wallops Shoreline Protection Project has been managing the restoration efforts and released before and after photos of the shoreline.Īt 8 a.m. 29, 2012, and as the powerful storm made its way along the East Coast it brought damage to NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va. Hurricane Sandy came ashore in northern New Jersey Oct.
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