Water Levels in New York City
update Monday; October 29, 2012 3:18pm (CDT) Eric Holthaus at the Wall Street Journal has a more in-depth analysis for the coming hours
I’ve been following the unfolding Sandy in the last couple of days. I’ve been relying of many online sources. Since I don’t have anything original to say, I decided to wait with a post here until things have settled down a bit.
However, I wanted to share this one chart of the water levels at “The Battery NY” (original available here. It shows observed (red dots) vs. modelled (pink and green) water levels. Note that the current water level is (slightly) higher than predicted. This has been true for the last couple of high tides, but those had smaller peaks.
The coming hours will be critical! There is a high tide coming up, coinciding with the landfall of Sandy. Additionally there’s a mid-latitude trough just east of the Great Lakes that pulls Sandy onto the North American continent. Additionally, as if that wasn’t enough, the North Atlantic Oscillation is in a negative phase, pulling Sandy towards the North-East. Decent summaries can be found here and here.