Could a hurricane be hitting long island in the next couple of months?

Question

**please real info

Answer 1

Yes it's likely. This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Great New England Hurricane of 1938 and a major hurricane {Category 3 or greater [winds greater than 178km/h(111mph)]} hits New York City/Long Island approximately every 70 years. Accuweather.com Hurricane Center is forecasting the majority of tropical systems to be hitting the Carolinas and north of them.

Hurricanes actually hit the Carolinas before hitting Long Island. They usually form around Cape Verde off the coast of Africa and head northwest and strengthen significantly and before the Bahamas, they had northward, making landfall in the Carolinas near the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and then Long Island. No one in the city or on the island is prepared for one because no one knows the risks of hurricanes on Long Island because we haven't had a hurricane since 1985 which is below average and we lucked out with Tropical Storm Floyd (1999). Meteorologists have been predicting this "Great New England Hurricane of the 2000's" since 2005. Which has given us plenty of time to prepare which  most people in the area did not use including myself. I also have heard that this could be the worst hurricane to make landfall in the U.S. ever. It would be worse then Katrina, Charley, Andrew and the Galveston Hurricane of 1901.

The waters are warm enough to support a major hurricane. Don't listen to anyone who tells you different because they're wrong. That's part of the reason why people aren't prepared. We've been having above average temperatures since April  and that heat wave in June and it's been warming up the ocean. Hurricanes and the features of Long Island are like oil and water. Long Island is at sea level for the most part and the storm surge from as Category 4 or 5 hurricane could do some serious flooding on the barrier islands like Fire Island, Jones Beach, and Long Beach as well as coastal areas. Also, New York City is a plain as well. Flood waters will get into the subway system and create underground river and Manhattan could be almost completely flooded over. There's also not even enough shelter in New York City for the population of the whole city because mostly schools will be used and 800 schools each can hold 100,000 people so only 800,000 people will have shelter which is not even close to the population. They might use Madison Square Garden and a few colleges which might not make it either. There's only one major interstate highway off of Long Island (I-495 Long Island Expressway going westbound) so traffic from people evacuating would be ridiculous. There are many other reasons why Long Island and the city are not even close to being prepared for a hurricane and the best thing you can do is be prepared and encourage others to be prepared as well.

Here's a link that will give you a lot of information on hurricanes as well as being prepared:

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/HAW2/english/int...

Also a good link is the Hurricane Center at Accuweather.com:

http://hurricane.accuweather.com/hurrica...

Here's a Google Earth hurricane tracker to track the paths of past storms as early as the 1800's. Select any year and then any hurricane and you'll get the path of that storm. When the path comes up click the category number at each point and it'll give you the date, time and wind speed the hurricane was at that point.  The 1938 hurricane was Hurricane 4 of that year and when it says that it was a tropical storm before making landfall, it was still a hurricane just not tropical any more and the winds were greater than 98mph, that's just an approximate path. Here's the link:

http://hurricane.accuweather.com/hurrica...

Answer 2

Monty hit upon many good points in answering this question. Statisically though, we are likely to have a hurricane making landfall on Long Island, at approximately the same percentage for each season; respective to its class.

Probability doesn't change, however, for each season some factors may contribute slightly more or less favorable for a landfall. These factors being el nino, el nina, the overall predicted forecast, sea surface temperatures, etc. These parameters will result in some standard deviation of the mean percentage on an annually basis.

To have a cat.5 landfall on Long Island is probably going too far, statistically. I am sure in the last 1000 years there probably has never been such an event. A category 4 is possible and arguments can be made for the 1938 hurricane being a cat.4 at landfall.  

In addition, there is stong evidence that the Great Gale of 1815 was a clearly a cat.4 when in made landfall in Moriches, Long Island, because after it went over Long Island land and the Sound, it hit Connecticut with a great force. Tree damage there shows that it was most likely a moderate to strong cat. 3 when it arrived there.

If we take into consideration that hurricanes do weaken as they move further North and over land, then it can be assumed that the Great Gale of 1815 was indeed a cat.4 over Moriches, Long Island.

However, we should note that these values are intrinsically based.  Absolute observations which tend to shift actual measurements of intensity can be increased due to some physical laws. Hurricanes moving northward do increase at a much faster velocity than those that are meandering west in the Gulf of Mexico or across the Cape Verde Atlantic for example. This increase in forward motion can be added to the wind speed in the Northeast quadrant of the storm. Therefore, a true cat.3 or cat.4 making landfall on lets say, Long Island, can actually have conditions similar to a cat.5; in terms of wind gusts and storm surges.

Email [e-mail] for further info. or additional information on the 1938 Hurricane.