This is gonna be bad. It's gonna be really, really bad.

[FourScore]

The latest military simulation: Teal is tropical force; green is cat 2 hurricane.

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. No wonder all the alerts that have gone ahead of the storm

also it is supposed (I hope they are dead wrong) to hit at high tide.

[HooptieWagon]

11. Not just any high tide...

A lunar high tide- higher than normal. There will be a lot of storm surge and coastal flooding. Probably flash flooding inland also.

[HappyMe]

2. Holy crap!

That seems way worse than what I was thinking.

Maybe I should do a wee bit more preparing.

[randome]

13. No, just set your hair on fire and run. Oh, wait...

[StarryNite]

3. Geez :(

[dballance]

4. Cat 2 is nothing to ignore

Last time I was in a cat 2 there was a lot of flooding and lots of power outages. This was in Miami.

[mysuzuki2]

5. That's not Good! I will miss Boston. It was a nice city.

[Drunken Irishman]

6. What do you define as really, really bad?

Because while the potential for it to be bad is there ... to me, really, really bad is entire cities wiped off the face of the earth (think Katrina). I'm not seeing this from what you posted. It's going to be messy, and people should definitely hunker down ... but I don't think it's going to be catastrophic.

[Harry Monroe]

18. "Entire cities wiped off the face of the earth"

Um..New Orleans is still here. Maybe you should get down here sometime and visit?

[Drunken Irishman]

24. Na'.

But thanks. I think the point still stands. Something that is going to be really, really, really bad devastates a community ... leaves hundreds dead and forces a huge rebuilding effort.

[Harry Monroe]

34. Correct on that point, but the cities are not "wiped off the face of the earth"

[melody]

20. I'm sitting in New Orleans right now

Big city, tons of people, everything still there. They were bloodied but unbowed -- and 90% back to full power.

[Harry Monroe]

35. Exactly! We were not "wiped off the face of the earth"

[coalition_unwilling]

36. Are all the black citizens back yet (those who weren't left to drown or die of

neglect)?

[melody]

38. Everyone suffered from Katrina

The poor suffered worst, of course. NOLA is an integrated community. My son and his family live among all races.

[melody]

40. incidentally

I'm from Los Angeles. New Orleans is a great city. What was done, was done by the Federal government to all the people of the region.

[Bolo Boffin]

23. "messy" is the operative word. A storm that huge and slow is going to dump

a deluge over the Eastern Seaboard. The winds will be bad enough, but the real body blows will come from the flooding.

[northoftheborder]

7. Get out of Dodge, if possible. Looks terrible.

This simulation looks as though Hurricane winds turn north right into NY and Penn after going into the NJ, Del. coast.

[HappyMe]

10. Some of the neighbors across the

street left this morning.

[WinkyDink]

22. PA.

[riverwalker]

8. OMG

edges damn near reaching Lake Superior

[shanti]

9. oh shit

my bro is a trucker in training, and he's on his way up to maine from texas. for him

[soleft]

12. I was just down at the beach in Ocean Grove, NJ

Earth movers are making a giant barrier of sand. They didn't do that for Irene. Also, a house around the corner has sand bags in front of their house. Never saw them do that before. We stayed during Irene. I think the flooding will be worse than the winds.

[aquart]

15. Last I saw NJ is getting the landfall.

[Bonhomme Richard]

14. I get to worry about three places.

My nephews sailboat near Baltimore I don't own but use a lot
A summer house I own on the water at the jersey shore
my house in Ct

[randome]

16. The Trifecta Of Anguish!

[tbennett76]

17. Dennis Quaid just called

he wants his movie script back.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

19. Is yellow Cat 2 as well? I see yellow

[countryjake]

21. Forecasters are expecting historical low pressure values...

falling down into unexperienced barometric measurements for the NorthEast.

Sandy may actually turn out to be worse than bad.

[nadinbrzezinski]

25. And that is really bad news bears

it could go into higher cat as well. (hope not)

[countryjake]

26. In the past half-hour, the National Weather Service...

has significantly increased the size of their "Action/Alert" area on the Threat Index map:



No matter what cat the National Hurricane Center chooses to dub this storm, it will hit with high wind, rain, and flooding across a vast area. Jim Cantore has been expressing aggravation with them this afternoon because they have said that once it can no longer be classified as a "Tropical Storm", their warnings will effectively cease. Sandy will be considered "Extra-Tropical" due to the effect that the cold air will have on it (which is what they usually call the big low-pressure systems that we get out here in the Pacific NorthWest). But Cantore is saying that for them to drop their warnings seems careless, considering the impact this weather may have on millions of people.

[nadinbrzezinski]

28. Oh my lord

that is a huge monster!

[Ellipsis]

27. DAMN! Check out this image of the second largest stormsince 1988 perhaps to become #1

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/angelafritz/comment.html?entrynum=29

[nadinbrzezinski]

31. It struck me in affected area as Katrina

[Odin2005]

29. OMG, that storm is FUCKING HUGE!!!

[whistler162]

30. Don't like the end of that film....

looks like it might run straight up the drumlins into Central NY. Where it will meet a Artic Blast.

[HeeBGBz]

32. I found this tweet about the surge

Eric Holthaus ?@WSJweather A NOAA analysis ranks #Sandy's wave/surge destructiveness at 5.7 on a 6.0 scale. I have never seen a value that high. http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Storm_pages/sandy2012/wind.html …

[tavernier]

33. I'm in the Keys and we're still getting pounded from the winds

and flooding two days after it went by. Yeah, it's huge.

[magical thyme]

37. it looks yellow right around the eye...nt

[malaise]

39. Why I am worried for all of you folks is that the pressure

keeps dropping.
What's more there are power cuts in North Carolina and Sandy was 300 miles off shore - prepare and stay safe.