Meteorologists: Serious Hurricane Could Hit Northeast
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Meteorologists studying historical weather patterns and current storm systems said a serious hurricane could hit the Northeast as early as this summer, and almost certainly within the next 10 years.
Forecasters at the AccuWeather.com Hurricane Center presented their preliminary 2006 hurricane predictions yesterday, and warned that if a hurricane reaches the New York metropolitan area, Long Island could be especially hard hit.
“The Northeast is staring down the barrel of a gun,” the chief forecaster of the AccuWeather.com Hurricane Center, Joe Bastardi, said. “I’d be surprised if in the next 10 years there aren’t one to two major hurricanes,” he said.
Mr. Bastardi said he is particularly concerned this year because a combination of weather patterns are reminiscent of the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, when the Northeast experienced severe storms. A cooling cycle in the Pacific Ocean coupled with a warming cycle in the Atlantic Ocean means the Northeast coast will likely experience a surge in storm activity, Mr. Bastardi said.
New York’s last severe hurricane – typically denoted as category 3 or higher – was in 1938.
The city’s Office of Emergency Management has contingency plans to evacuate low-lying areas that are prone to flooding, such as parts of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, but whether the city will be prepared in case of a severe hurricane is another matter, and it has been the subject of much debate since last year.
“We could end up with another New Orleans situation here,” Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, a Democrat of Westchester, said. Mr. Brodsky’s office produced a report in September that criticized the city’s preparedness, and his office is slated to release its final evaluation within days, he said.
A spokesman for the OEM, Jarrod Bernstein, defended the agency and said the city is “absolutely” prepared. If a storm hit, people living in evacuation zones would report to reception facilities, from which they would be assigned to one of about 1,000 shelters citywide, he said.
The agency is absorbing the lessons of Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Bernstein said. Most significantly, the agency will operate with new population figures provided by the national Army Corps of Engineers, which has indicated that as many as 2.5 million New Yorkers live in evacuation zones, not the 1 million or so it reported in 1993.
