Hurricane Sandy - October, 2012
Compiled by John McDaris, SERC.
Hurricane Sandy made itself felt in the Caribbean as a Category 1 storm that moved through the region dumping rain, lashing out with high winds, and causing the deaths of more than 40 people. After leaving the Caribbean, however, a unique set of conditions and interactions with other weather systems and the jet stream allowed the storm to stay powerful and become a "post tropical cyclone" with New England in its crosshairs. The news media have dubbed Sandy the "Frankenstorm" both for its proximity to Halloween as well as for the unprecedented combination of factors that made the storm possible.
Last Updated: 8:00 AM CDT, November 2, 2012
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Images, Videos, and Visualizations
National Hurricane Center - Hurricane Sandy: This page from the National Weather Service provides graphical information about Hurricane Sandy, it's development, and it's impact along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States and Canada. It also provides access to GIS data related to the storm and its effects.
Google CrisisMap - Hurricane Sandy: This map displays information about Hurricane Sandy for which the Google Crisis Response Team has collected geographic information. The data comes from a variety of sources, including official information sources and user-generated content. Various layers of data can be added to the display to show the location of emergency shelters, webcams capturing the event, and traffic conditions as well as other information.
NASA - Hurricane Sandy: This page from NASA presents the latest images and data about Hurricane Sandy obtained from NASA's fleet of satellites and research craft. The posts include work by NASA scientists to study the interior of the storm from orbit and observations as it moved out of the Caribbean and began it's trek up the East Coast of the US.
Wind Map: This great visualization is a personal art project of visualization artists
Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg. The animated infographic displays wind flow on a silhouette of America. Surface wind data comes from the
National Digital Forecast Database. The continuous nature of the project makes it difficult to provide visuals for a particular event, although there is a gallery of past images. Below are a series of images of the winds associated with Hurricane/Superstorm Sandy over the end of October and early November.
Windmap image from 9:59 AM EDT on October 29, 2012 showing winds associated with Hurricane Sandy.
![[creative commons]](/images/creativecommons_16.png)
Provenance: From the Windmap Project - http://hint.fm/wind/
Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.
Windmap image from 4:59 PM EDT on October 29, 2012 showing winds associated with Hurricane Sandy.
Provenance: From the Windmap Project - http://hint.fm/wind/
Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.
Windmap image from 6:59 PM EDT on October 29, 2012 showing winds associated with Hurricane Sandy.
Provenance: From the Windmap Project - http://hint.fm/wind/
Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.
Windmap image from 10:59 PM EDT on October 29, 2012 showing winds associated with Hurricane Sandy.
Provenance: From the Windmap Project - http://hint.fm/wind/
Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.
Windmap image from 6:59 AM EDT on October 29, 2012 showing winds associated with Hurricane Sandy.
Provenance: From the Windmap Project - http://hint.fm/wind/
Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.
Windmap image from 8:59 AM EDT on October 29, 2012 showing winds associated with Hurricane Sandy.
Provenance: From the Windmap Project - http://hint.fm/wind/
Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.
Hurricane Sandy Response Imagery Viewer: This website from NOAA's National Geodetic Survey allows users to view imagery of the US Northeast coast before and after Hurricane Sandy came ashore. The base imagery is from Google's map service and can be either the streets or satellite view. The after images have adjustable transparency to allow easy comparison to the before state.
Hurricane Sandy SRSOR Movie (full Daylight): This satellite imagery movie by the University of Wisconsin - Madison
Space Science and Engineering Center shows Hurricane Sandy approaching the East Coast of the US just as night closes in. Additional movies of sandy are available at the SSEC website.
Information and News Reports
Hurricane Sandy's Transformation: Cliff Mass is a respected climatologist/meteorologist at the University of Washington who blogs about weather and forecasting. His October 28, 2012 post goes in depth on the transformation of Sandy from a classic Category 1 hurricane to the extratropical behemoth taking aim at the North American Atlantic Coast.
Superstorm Sandy delivers a devastating blow to the U.S.: This is part of Dr. Jeff Masters' blog at Weather Underground. Dr. Masters is an authoritative voice on the subject of severe weather events including tropical cyclones, tornado outbreaks, and winter storms. He has a number of posts regarding Hurricane Sandy which can be access from this article.
NPR Coverage of Hurricane Sandy: National Public Radio has a number of news articles, blog posts, and on-air segments devoted to the progression and development of Hurricane Sandy.
The Telegraph Coverage of Hurricane Sandy: London's Telegraph Online has near-real-time coverage of the storm including articles, pictures, and social media contributions from Americans in the path of the storm.
MPR - The Updraft Blog: Minnesota Public Radio's Chief Meteorologist Paul Hutner blogs about the science, observations, and models used by forecasters to shed light on the weather and how we try to predict it. In his series of posts about Hurricane Sandy, he draws together many lines of inquiry and policy to stitch together a larger picture of the storm.
The Weather Channel - Hurricane Sandy Coverage: This archive of the Weather Channel's coverages of the storm contains a large number of short video segments covering different times and places along the life-cycle of the storm.
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