Community Corner

Tracking Moody Hurricane Irene

The storm skipped Florida but is headed straight toward the Eastern Seaboard.

If you’re planning one last beach trip out to Long Island this weekend, or even air travel to or from New York City, you might want to make alternate plans, just in case…

Hurricane Irene has swapped out Florida for the Eastern Seaboard as its next target, and if it hits, it appears Sunday will be its chosen day.

According to New York City's Office of Emergency Management, the last hurricane to pass directly over the city was 90 years ago, in 1821, causing tides to rise 13 feet in one hour and flooding all of lower Manhattan to Canal Street.

Find out what's happening in Bayside-Douglastonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

But that’s not the case for Long Island. It has seen dozens of more storms than its neighbors inland. Who can forget the Long Island Express of 1938? It was a Category 3 storm. The U.S. government says if this storm were to hit today, it would cause $40 billion in damage if it hit today.

Irene would not be so punishing, however. Jeff Masters, of Weather Underground, said in a blog post Wednesday that if Irene hits Long Island, the storm has the potential to be a $10 billion disaster.

Find out what's happening in Bayside-Douglastonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

If you have ever tracked hurricane cone-patterns, you know that these projected paths sometimes change drastically. Sometimes the hurricanes lessen or peter out, and other times they get worse. A hurricane’s furor can be very unpredictable.

However, as of now, the graphic from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Satellite tracking image shows a weekend landfall in the Carolinas. The center part of the path shows 8:00 AM Sunday as being the expected arrival time in the surrounding areas around Washington D.C., which puts New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and other locations at risk over the hours after that.

Patch will have future updates on this moody mama of a hurricane.


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