Forecasters said yesterday there was a 90 per cent certainty Hurricane Sandy would make landfall on the east coast but cautioned that it was too early to say where the giant storm would strike or how intense its winds would be when it hit.
Computer models show potential targets include an area stretching roughly from Chesapeake Bay to southern New England. The storm may stay off the coast in the Atlantic Ocean until Monday or Tuesday, but it will probably combine with colder weather from the west to dump more than a foot of snow in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia and cause strong winds all the way to the Ohio River Valley and eastern Great Lakes.
The storm is expected to dump as much as 10ins of rain in the area where it makes landfall and to create a storm surge that will lead to flooding throughout a large coastal area, forecasters said.
“We expect a long-lasting event – two to three days for most people,” said James Franklin of the National Hurricane Center. Yesterday morning, the hurricane tore through the Bahamas with 100mph winds, after killing at least 21 people in the Caribbean. – (New York Times service)