Hurricanes // Current TV

Superstorm Sandy shook the Earth

by Sid Perkins

When Superstorm Sandy struck the United States on 30 October, it didn't just devastate the Eastern Seaboard, it shook the ground as far away as the West Coast, producing tiny vibrations in Earth's crust that were picked up by seismometers there. Scientists can use this activity to track the path of the storm. Now, they say that analyzing past records of these vibrations may help them discern whether climate change has influenced the amount of storminess over the world's oceans in recent decades.

Hurricane Sandy swept northward a few hundred kilometers off the East Coast, hooked left, and then slammed into the shore just northeast of Atlantic City, New Jersey. Long before the storm struck land, however, minuscule vibrations triggered in Earth's crust could be picked up on instruments onshore, says Oner Sufri, a seismologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. While some of the motions were produced by surf pounding beaches, a larger fraction came from large storm waves far offshore that smashed into each other.

The most intense ground motions were triggered as Sandy swerved toward shore—which also happened to be toward the nationwide network of seismometers shaken by the storm, Sufri reported today at the annual meeting of the Seismological Society of America in Salt Lake City. For the new study, Sufri and university colleague Keith Koper analyzed data recorded across the continental United States between 18 October and 4 November, an interval that also included at least two significant earthquakes.

Storm-induced seismic vibes aren't a newly recognized phenomenon. In 2005, ground motions triggered by Hurricane Katrina were picked up by seismometers in California. And even storms that remain far from land can trigger ground motions, Sufri and Koper note.

Because the strongest ground motions are typically created at or near a storm, researchers can track its progress using seismic data alone. That offers opportunities for scientists to delve through old data sets—especially those from the presatellite era—to look for signs of storms that might have been missed by earthbound observers, or to better estimate their paths and intensities, Sufri says.

The ground motions generated by strong storms over the sea typically cycle at low frequency, outside the range of most vibrations produced by earthquakes, says Daniel McNamara, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colorado. "Previously, such vibrations were thought of as seismic noise and they were filtered out, but now they're recognized as useful," he notes.

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By poring through seismic data gathered in recent decades, researchers might gain insight into whether and how changing climate has influenced long-term trends in the storm-induced waviness of Earth's oceans. "This is just another piece of the puzzle that can help researchers resolve storminess trends in the global oceans," Aster says.

Although it's now possible to track major storms at sea using images from space, seismic data could help fill in any gaps created if a weather-gazing satellite fails before its replacement is traveling in the same orbit, Sufri says.

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Hurricane Sandy may slam into U.S. East Coast as Halloween week "Frankenstorm"

An unusual nasty mix of a hurricane and a winter storm that forecasters are now calling "Frankenstorm" is likely to blast most of the East Coast next week, focusing the worst of its weather mayhem around New York City and New Jersey.

U.S. government forecasters on Thursday upped the odds of a major weather mess, now saying there's a 90 percent chance that the East will get steady gale-force winds, heavy rain, flooding and maybe snow starting Sunday and stretching past Halloween on Wednesday.

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Meteorologists say it is likely to cause $1 billion in damages.

The storm is a mix of Hurricane Sandy, now in the Caribbean as a Category 2 storm, as well as an early winter storm in the West and a blast of arctic air from the North. They're predicted to collide and park over the country's most populous coastal corridor and reach as far inland as Ohio.

Hurricane Sandy lashed the central Bahamas on Thursday night with violent winds and torrential rains, after raging through the Caribbean where it caused at least 21 deaths and forced postponement of a hearing at the Guantanamo naval base on Cuba.

The hurricane part of the storm is likely to come ashore somewhere in New Jersey on Tuesday morning, said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecaster Jim Cisco. But this is a storm that will affect a far wider area, so people all along the East have to be wary, Cisco said.

Coastal areas from Florida to Maine will feel some effects, mostly from the hurricane part, he said, and the other parts of the storm will reach inland from North Carolina northward.

"It will get broader. It won't be as intense, but its effects will be spread over a very large area," the hurricane center's chief hurricane specialist, James Franklin, said Thursday.

One of the more messy aspects of the expected storm is that it just won't leave. The worst of it should peak early Tuesday, but it will stretch into midweek, forecasters say. Weather may start clearing in the mid-Atlantic Nov. 1 and Nov. 2 in the Northeast, Cisco said.

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