October 28, 2012
Delaware Township's Emergency Management Agency has issued the following information regarding hurricane Sandy:
Based on the 9 am conference call with the NWS – it appears that although we will probably see a fair amount of rain, the greatest threat to our area will be high winds. Currently the models are predicting that there is up to a 70 percent chance to have sustained winds in excess of 39 MPH for quite an extended period, beginning Monday afternoon as the storm comes ashore and lasting until sometime Tuesday morning. There could also be gust well over 50 to 60 MPH. The current path has the storm coming ashore in southern NJ and going straight into southeast Pennsylvania and eventually turning north toward the middle of the commonwealth.
It appears that the heaviest rains may stay south and west of our area. But as was also mentioned, it is too early to tell exactly where the heaviest rains will fall as we are still over 24 hours away from landfall and tropical storms are known to be unpredictable and not follow what the weather folks predict. We have experienced that several times in the past. The Poconos and the Catskill were two areas that were mentioned frequently as perhaps seeing the highest winds and having the most uncertainty in the amount of rainfall.
From past experience, many of the heaviest amounts of rain have fallen east of the storm as the moisture is pulled in and dumped on the mountain slopes. Could that happen again – who knows. They do expect flash flooding as some of the heavier rainbands move through, but there is no way of knowing where those bands will strike.
Recommendations – continue to prepare for the worst and expect damaging winds and long duration power outages. I would suggest that if you didn’t like Irene in 2011, you will definitely not like Sandy in 2012.