Sandy Hook

I just read another article discussing how hurricane Sandy is a symptom of climate change. What a joke! The hurricane is not a symptom of climate change. It is a weak hurricane that had an extremely unusual course and which joined up with a regular low pressure area as a result. Let's look at the facts.

1) Sandy hit the shore with sustained winds at just about the minimum amount needed to be categorized as a hurricane rather than a tropical storm. As hurricanes go, it was extremely weak.

2) Sandy was travelling on a course to the north-northeast for about a day prior to making a turn to the west and hitting New Jersey. In the Atlantic, storms at higher lattitudes (like those above 35 degrees north) almost never turn to the west. It was Sandy's hook to the left that made the storm so unusual and so devastating.

3) Sandy joined together with a normal low pressure area that was over the east coast as it approached the shore. This made the hurricane extremely wide. The storm extended out hundreds of miles wider than a normal hurricane. This wide reach is what caused so much of the damage in northern New Jersey, New York and Connecticut.

4) As hurricane's go, there was nothing about Sandy that indicates anything whatsoever about the climate. Is Earth warmer? Is Earth cooler? Is the atmosperic temperature unchanged? It makes no difference as far as Sandy is concerned.

The sad thing is that so much of what gets written about climate change is nonsense.