Nearly 400,000 residents evacuated, the army mobilized, Manhattan under water, the big Halloween parade canceled for the 1re times in its history, just like the New York marathon, the famous stock market closed, and a city plunged into darkness… It's a scenario worthy of a disaster movie that hit New York around Halloween time ago at 12 years old.
New York City is used to snowstorms, but certainly not hurricanes. It is very rare for one of these weather phenomena to travel up the east coast while remaining strong, and even rarer for it to affect the New York metropolitan area. However, this is what happened between October 29 and 30, 2012 with Hurricane Sandy.
After crossing the Antilles in category 2, Sandy took a trajectory very north: the hurricane hit New Jersey, a neighboring state of New York, with gusts of 150 km/h, i.e. in category 1, but above all a surge of 4 meters and waves of 11 meters offshore. The precipitation was torrential, almost 200 millimeters in one day in New York State.
New York underwater, and in flames, at the same time
Sandy was not a typical hurricane: it merged with a depression coming from Canada, resulting in what Americans call a “perfect storm” (A Perfect Stormas in the famous disaster film with George Clooney, and the eponymous novel). And that's not all, everything seems to have combined to lead to a catastrophic scenario in the most urbanized and populated area of the United States: the hurricane arrives in the middle of a period of great tidestides.
Almost the entire South Coast found itself under water: Manhattan, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island. THE ventsvents strong had another consequence: they exploded transformerstransformers electrical and caused leaks of gazgaz. Fires then broke out in several neighborhoods: the city found itself underwater and in the feufeu at the same time !
Sandy caused the deaths of 131 people in the United States, including 41 in New York, and $50 billion in damage.
No events weather reportweather report has, since Sandy, shaken New York City so much.
