Nor'easter May Break Records, Threatens Billions in Real Estate
Bloomberg) -- A potentially record-breaking nor’easter is set to pummel the East Coast with wind, snow and rain Friday, putting billions of dollars of coastal real estate at risk from “unprecedented flooding.”
While upwards of a foot (30 centimeters) of snow may fall across interior New York, Pennsylvania and northern New England, the storm’s most dangerous aspects will likely be the high tides and strong winds due to start early Friday and continue through Saturday. Hurricane-strength winds may even strike the waters around Cape Cod in Massachusetts, and gusts of as much as 65 miles (105 kilometers) per hour may reach inland areas.
“This could be one of those storms that goes into the record books,” said Kim Buttrick, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Taunton, Massachusetts. “This is a very dangerous storm.”
In January, a powerful storm drove tides in Massachusetts to their highest on record, flooding parts of Boston as well as its northern and southern suburbs, that record might fall by Saturday, Buttrick said. A combination of rising seas, higher than normal tides because of the full moon and the power of the storm itself could drive tides higher in Boston and the Massachusetts coast.
“January 4 was an unprecedented event, and now we could have a second one,” Buttrick said.
The slow speed of the storm will make matters worse, said Rob Carolan, a meteorologist with Hometown Forecast Services in Nashua, New Hampshire. Its progress will be blocked by other weather patterns, preventing it from slipping quickly away into the Atlantic so the storm will be able to pound against the coast.
Buttrick said even as the tides go through the low end of the cycle, water may stay high because the storm’s winds will keep pushing water at the coast.
Tides could rise 3 feet higher than normal in Jamaica Bay in Queens and along southern Long Island, and by as much as 4 feet along the Massachusetts coastline, including Boston Harbor. Waves higher than 20 feet could crash into coastal towns north and south of Boston and on Cape Cod, washing out roads, damaging homes and leaving people stranded “for an extended time,” the National Weather Service said.
In addition to the coastal flooding, heavy rain may send rivers over their banks, the weather service said.
Buttrick said residents should heed evacuation notices and no one should go sight seeing. “We don’t want any casualties,” she said.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/noreaster-may-break-records-threatens-billions-in-real-estate/ar-BBJKiEk?li=BBnb7Kz
= new reply since forum marked as read
looks pretty bad.
Everybody try to be safe.
