CSU meteorologists think the stormy summer will be fueled by unusually warm waters in the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea. Hurricanes and tropical storms — the seeds from which hurricanes grow — draw their energy from seawater that has been warmed to at least 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

Meteorologists Phil Klotzbach and co-author William Gray don’t think a hurricane-suppressing weather event known as an El Niño is likely to occur this year.

“The tropical Atlantic has anomalously warmed over the past several months, and it appears that the chances of an El Niño event this summer and fall are unlikely,” Klotzbach said.

An El Niño occurs when waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean off the coast of South America are warmer than usual. When this happens, it can cause upper level winds — known as wind shear — to form over the tropical Atlantic. The wind shear makes it more difficult for tropical storms to form, and when they do form, the vertical winds can disrupt their momentum and prevent them from developing into more powerful storms.

The overall CSU forecast predicts that 18 named storms with winds of at least 35 mph will form between June 1 and November 30. Nine of those storms will develop into hurricanes with winds exceeding 74 mph.

Other predictions in the forecast include:

• A 72 percent probability that a major hurricane will make landfall somewhere on the U.S. Gulf or Atlantic coasts. The average probability for U.S. landfall for the last century is 52 percent.

• A 48 percent chance that a major hurricane will strike the U.S. East Coast. The average likelihood for the past 100 years is 31 percent.

• A 47 percent chance that a major hurricane will come ashore somewhere on the U.S. Gulf Coast from the Florida peninsula to Brownsville, Texas near the U.S.-Mexico border. The average for this region for the past 100 years is 30 percent.

• A 61 percent probability that a major hurricane will strike land somewhere in the Caribbean Sea. The average for the Caribbean for the last century is 42 percent.

If the forecast for the 2013 hurricane season is accurate, it will continue a trend of active hurricane seasons that started in 1995. Meteorologists think hurricane activity is influenced by cyclical fluctuations in the salt content of seawater. When the salt content is higher — as it is now — water temperatures are warmer and more hurricanes tend to form.

These cycles can last 20 years or more.

The CSU meteorologists will update their forecast on June 3. The full preseason forecast by Klotzbach and Gray can be viewed at CSU’s Tropical Meteorology website.

Willie Drye has been writing about hurricanes and other topics for National Geographic News since 2003. He is also writing a book about the Florida land boom of the 1920s.

In a recently released paper discussing the unusual “super-storm” that devastated the New Jersey shore and flooded the New York City subway and a traffic tunnel, CSU researchers William Gray and Phil Klotzbach say the influence of human activity on the formation and intensity of Atlantic hurricanes “is likely to be negligible.”

“As extensive and tragic as Sandy’s spawned destruction has been, it is not beyond the range of what is known about the variability of rare but extreme cyclone events,” Gray and Klotzbach wrote.

The researchers acknowledge that human activity has led to an increase in carbon dioxide being released into the Earth’s atmosphere and an increase in average temperature. But Gray and Klotzbach do not think that has caused more frequent and powerful hurricanes to form.

“Our hurricane research extending over many years indicates that Atlantic hurricane variability is driven almost exclusively by natural changes,” they wrote.

Gray, who has been studying hurricanes since the 1960s, was a pioneer in long-range hurricane forecasting. He determined that fluctuations in the salt content of ocean water — a naturally occuring cycle — affect the frequency with which hurricanes form.

When the salt content is high — as it is now in the Atlantic Basin — ocean water is warmer. Hurricanes draw their power from warm ocean waters, so the increase in salinity can lead to a corresponding increase in the number of hurricanes that form each summer.

Cycles of increased hurricane formation can last 20 years or more. Gray has said that a period of increased hurricane activity began in the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico in 1995.

Hurricane Sandy, which began as a tropical depression deep in the Caribbean Sea on October 22, morphed into a giant “perfect storm” as it pounded its way up the Atlantic Coast. On October 29, an unusual configuration of the jet stream and the position of a high pressure system to the north gave Sandy a powerful boost of energy and caused it to take an unusual track. The storm caused catastrophic destruction on the New Jersey shore and sent a storm surge of more than 13 feet into New York City.

The costs of Hurricane Sandy are still being added up, but the final total is expected to exceed $50 billion. Still, conclusions that Sandy and other extremely powerful and destructive storms were caused by climate change are mistaken, the CSU researchers said.

Gray and Klotzbach noted that 216 tropical storms formed during the 57 years from 1899 to 1955. By comparison, only 185 tropical storms formed during the 57-year period between 1956 and 2012, when the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere was higher.

If increased carbon dioxide levels cause more hurricanes to form, then the number of storms from 1956 to 2012 should have exceeded the number from 1899 to 1956, the researchers conclude.

Willie Drye has been writing about hurricanes and other topics for National Geographic News since 2003, and he is currently writing a book about the Florida land boom of the 1920s. Follow his blog, Drye Goods.

Exactly how those changes might unfold isn’t clear. But some scientists who study hurricanes and coastal environments outlined some possibilities at the annual conference of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco on Monday.

Ning Lin of Princeton University,  Hilary Stockdon of the U.S. Geological Survey in Saint Petersburg, Florida and and Dylan McNamara of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington said unusually powerful storms such as Hurricane Sandy may form a little more frequently in the future. Some of these destructive storms will be so-called “black swan” storms that are unprecedented.

The term “black swan” refers to a theory developed by Lebanese-American scholar Nassim Nicholas Taleb to explain major unexpected events that have dramatic, far-reaching and long-lasting effects.

“A black swan is a surprise event with a huge impact,” Lin said. “It can’t reasonably be anticipated based on historic records.”

“A black swan is a surprise event with a huge impact,” Lin said. “It can’t reasonably be anticipated based on historic records.”

Although Sandy brought an unusually large storm surge into downtown Manhattan that flooded part of the city’s subway system and a traffic tunnel, it was not the first time that a storm had brought such flooding to the city. An unnamed hurricane in August 1821 sent a 13-foot storm surge into Manhattan, and Hurricane Irene in 2011 also caused flooding in the city.

Kerry Emanuel, a meteorologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who collaborated with Lin on a study of black swan storms, said Sandy didn’t qualify for the designation because of the flooding from the earlier storms and because a storm such as Sandy had been expected to strike New York.

Emanuel said although black swan storms may form a little more often, they will not become common. He thinks global warming will contribute to the formation of more powerful hurricanes and could be a factor in the formation of black swan storms. But meteorologists don’t yet know exactly how global warming will affect hurricane formation, he said.

“Climate change has increased the probability of such storms,” Emanuel said. “We predict the number will increase. Whether climate change already has affected storm formation is more debatable.”

Still, Emanuel and UNCW’s McNamara said storms and rising sea levels could lead to a gradual population shift on U.S. coasts. In a century or two, McNamara said, “classic tourist resort towns” on barrier islands such as North Carolina’s Outer Banks and the New Jersey Shore may have to be abandoned.

Willie Drye has been writing about hurricanes and other topics for National Geographic News since 2003. Follow his blog, Drye Goods.

This NOAA photo shows Hurricane Mitch in October 1998. The powerful hurricane sank a vintage yacht that tried to outrun it in the Caribbean Sea.

As Hurricane Sandy pounded its way up the Atlantic Coast last week, a tragic and compelling sidebar to the hurricane’s devastation was the loss of two lives and a replica of a historic wooden tall ship in the treacherous waters off the coast of North Carolina.

Questions have been raised about whether Robin Walbridge, the captain of the replica HMS Bounty, should have left New London, Connecticut bound for Saint Petersburg, Florida knowing that Hurricane Sandy was moving up the Atlantic Coast. Walbridge thought he could avoid the storm, but like other ill-fated mariners before him, he could not outguess nature.

A U.S. Coast Guard rescue crew from Elizabeth City, North Carolina saved 14 people who had been aboard the ship, but Walbridge and another crewmember, Claudine Christian, died when the ship sank October 29 about 90 miles southeast of Cape Hatteras.

The Coast Guard is investigating the sinking of the ship. The query will examine the latest example of a captain who challenged the ferocity of a storm at sea and lost. There are many such stories.

On Saturday, August 31, 1935, Captain Einar Sundstrom, master of the passenger liner SS Dixie, cast off from New Orleans to begin what should have been a six-day voyage to New York. The Dixie carried 231 passengers and 120 crewmembers.

Sundstrom knew a hurricane had formed east of the Bahamas, and that his course would take him through the Straits of Florida. The narrow passageway separating Florida from Cuba and the Bahamas would leave Sundstrom very little room for maneuvering if he needed to get out of the way of a hurricane, but the veteran mariner thought he could avoid the storm.

By Labor Day Monday, September 2, the Dixie had rounded Key West, Florida and entered the Straits. Based on advisories from the U.S. Weather Bureau — the predecessor to the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center — Sundstrom thought the storm was almost 200 miles behind him and moving away from him as it skirted Cuba’s northern coast.

But 1935 was long before radar and satellites were pinpointing the paths and locations of hurricanes, and the Weather Bureau’s calculations about the position of the storm were well off the mark. Unknown to the Weather Bureau or to Sundstrom, the storm had turned and was heading for an eventual landfall at Long Key, Florida. It also had freakishly intensified into one of the most powerful hurricanes on record, with winds that probably were gusting to more than 200 mph.

And the Dixie was sailing straight for it.

By 4 p.m., the Dixie was rolling and pitching through seas that were so high they were breaking over the ship’s bridge 55 feet above the usual surface of the ocean. Around 5 p.m., the Dixie entered the eye of the hurricane.

Sundstrom checked his barometer, a centuries-old instrument that is still one of the best indicators of the intensity of a hurricane. The instrument read 27.27 inches, one of the lowest readings ever taken at that time. By comparison, Hurricane Andrew had a barometric pressure reading of 27.23 inches when it made landfall just south of Miami in August 1992.

But the storm, which came to be known as the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, was still rapidly intensifying and its winds would become even more powerful before it made landfall around 9:30 p.m. Sundstrom knew he was being pushed ever closer to the treacherous reefs off the Florida Keys, but he was powerless to do anything about it.

At 8:12 p.m., the hurricane threw the Dixie onto French Reef just off Key Largo. Somehow, the ship withstood the overnight pounding of what became the most powerful hurricane to make landfall in U.S. history. There were only a few minor injuries among passengers and crewmembers, although days would pass before the sea calmed enough to allow rescuers to remove them.

A board of inquiry in New York City later exonerated Sundstrom of any blame for the grounding.
Two other ships’ encounters with powerful storms did not have such happy outcomes, however.

Powerful storms are not unusual over Lake Superior in November. The huge lake — essentially an inland sea — can become treacherous and even deadly for freighters trying to make one last haul before shipping shuts down for the winter.

On November 8, 1975, a storm formed over the Oklahoma Panhandle and began moving northeastward across Kansas. Meteorologists predicted it eventually would cross Lake Superior as it moved into Canada.

Around 2:15 p.m. on November 9, the Great Lakes freighter Edmund Fitzgerald left Superior, Wisconsin bound for Detroit with 26,000 tons of iron ore pellets. The ship had a crew of 29.

The Fitzgerald‘s master, Ernest McSorley, knew a storm was brewing. But McSorley, who had sailed the Great Lakes for 44 years and was planning to retire the following month, decided to navigate away from the usual shipping lane across Lake Superior. McSorley and the captain of another freighter, the Arthur M. Anderson, chose a more northerly route that they thought would avoid the worst of the storm’s winds.

But 24 hours after leaving Superior, the Fitzgerald and the Anderson were in the teeth of the fierce winter storm, fighting their way through waves that could have been as high as 30 feet and winds that at times may have exceeded 90 mph — nearly as strong as a Category 2 hurricane . During a radio transmission to another vessel around 5:30 p.m., McSorley said his ship had taken some damage from the storm and that he had never seen such turbulent seas on Lake Superior.

The Anderson was about 10 miles behind the Fitzgerald around 7:10 p.m. when that ship’s master, Jesse Cooper, talked by radio to McSorley. The Fitzgerald‘s captain told Cooper that his ship was “holding its own.”

That was the last anyone heard from the ill-fated freighter. Around 7:20 p.m., Cooper noticed that the Fitzgerald was no longer visible on his radar screen. He tried to reach the Fitzgerald by radio but didn’t get a response. At 7:32 p.m., Cooper radioed the Coast Guard and said he thought the Fitzgerald had sunk.

Searchers eventually found the Fitzgerald, broken into two pieces, at the bottom of Lake Superior. A Coast Guard investigation completed in May 1978 concluded that the force of the gigantic waves pounding the Fitzgerald‘s deck broke open cargo hatches that caused the ship to flood and sink.

Another powerful October hurricane seemed determined to find and sink a venerable sailing ship in the Caribbean Sea in 1998. The storm was Hurricane Mitch, a monster Category 5 hurricane whose most powerful winds reached 188 mph before it made landfall in Ecuador. The ship was the Fantome, a yacht that was built in 1927 for the Duke of Westminster and later owned by the Guiness Brewing Company and Aristotle Onassis.

In 1998, the Fantome was owned by Windjammer Barefoot Cruises of Miami and was used for six-day pleasure cruises between Honduras and Belize. On October 25, 1998, the Fantome was scheduled to start one of its regular runs from Omoa, Honduras to Belize with 97 passengers.

Because of the hurricane, company officials first decided to cancel the cruise to Belize and instead cruise eastward to the Honduras Bay Islands. Then they decided to sail straight to Belize City — a 12-hour trip — unload the passengers and cancel the cruise altogether.

By the time the passengers were unloaded, Hurricane Mitch had become one of the most powerful hurricanes on record. The storm’s center was to the northeast of Belize City.

“Fantome was cornered by the storm,” the New York Times later wrote. “If she stayed … she could have been sunk or run aground.”

The ship’s captain conferred with his bosses in Miami. They decided to put out to sea rather than risk having the Fantome wrecked in port.

After checking the forecast track for Mitch, the ship’s master, Guyan March, sailed southeast, thinking this would protect his ship. But on the afternoon of October 27, the storm turned southwest instead of following the track forecast.

March and Windjammer officials then decided the Fantome should sail eastward. By now, Mitch’s eye — and its 180 mph winds — were about 45 miles away from the Fantome. But the ship was still struggling in 100 mph winds and 15-foot waves.

By 4:30 p.m., the Fantome could no longer be reached by satellite telephone. Windjammer officials later learned that the storm had taken another unexpected turn and closed in on the Fantome. The ship and its crew were never seen nor heard from again. Coast Guard searchers later found wreckage and empty life rafts from the ship, but no survivors.

“It is almost as if the hurricane hunted her down,” the New York Times said.

Willie Drye has been writing about hurricanes and other topics for National Geographic News since 2003. Follow his blog, Drye Goods.

This satellite image from NOAA shows Sandy on the morning of October 29, 2012 as it was about to begin its approach to the coast of New Jersey.

Hurricane Sandy will be remembered as a raging freak of nature that became one of the most destructive storms in U.S. history. Here is a timeline from Sandy’s birth deep in the Caribbean Sea to its dissipation over Pennsylvania nine days later.

October 22
A tropical depression forms in the southern Caribbean Sea off the coast of Nicaragua. The depression strengthens and becomes Tropical Storm Sandy, with maximum winds of about 40 mph.

October 24
Sandy has become a Category 1 hurricane as it moves northward across the Caribbean and crosses Jamaica with winds of 80 mph. Although Sandy’s eye does not cross the Dominican Republic and Haiti to its east, the storm dumps more than 20 inches of rain on Hispaniola. More than 50 people die in flooding and mudslides in Haiti.

October 26
Sandy strengthens as it moves from Jamaica to Cuba and strikes the historic city of Santiago de Cuba with winds of about 110 mph, only 1 mph below the status of a major Category 3 hurricane. “Everything is destroyed,” Santiago resident Alexis Manduley told Reuters by telephone.
Sandy causes more devastation as it crosses the Bahamas and makes a slight turn to the north-northwest.

October 27
Sandy moves away from the Bahamas and makes a turn to the northeast off the coast of Florida. News services estimate the death toll in the Caribbean at 70 or more. The storm briefly weakens to a tropical depression, but quickly re-intensifies into a Category 1 hurricane.

October 28
Sandy continues moving northeast on a track that takes it parallel to the coasts of Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. But the storm’s center stays well offshore as it approaches latitude 35 degrees north off the coast of North Carolina. Still, the storm sends powerful waves onto North Carolina’s Outer Banks, washing out NC Highway 12 in places.

The storm is still a Category 1 hurricane with peak winds of about 80 mph. But an unusual configuration of weather factors is converging, and meteorologists warn that the storm likely wil morph into a powerful, hybrid super-storm as it churns northward.

A high-pressure cold front to Sandy’s north will force the storm to start turning to the northwest toward major cities such as Baltimore, Washington, Philadelphia and New York. And the full moon will make Sandy’s storm surge – expected to be 11 to 12 feet in some places – a little higher as it makes landfall. Sandy has expanded into a huge storm with winds covering about 1,000 miles.

“You just don’t see this kind of stuff,” Keith Blackwell, a meteorologist at the University of South Alabama’s Coastal Weather Research Center in Mobile, tells National Geographic News. “It’s so strong and so large. Normally protected areas like New York Harbor and Long Island are seeing the worst-cast scenario.”

October 29
12:30 p.m.:  Sandy has made its expected sharp turn toward the northwest on a path for the coast of New Jersey. The storm also has started interacting with other weather systems, gaining energy in the process. The storm will dump heavy snow in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina.

Sandy will have a run of about 300 miles over open water as it heads for landfall, giving it time to build up a huge storm surge that will be a little bigger because of the influence of the full moon.

Meanwhile, a replica of the tall ship HMS Bounty, en route from New London, Connecticut to Saint Petersburg, Florida with 16 people on board, is caught in Sandy’s raging seas in the infamous “Graveyard of the Atlantic” off the Outer Banks. CNN reports that the ship’s captain, Robin Walbridge, tries to steer his ship away from the worst of Sandy’s wrath, but the ship’s pumps fail and it begins rapidly flooding and starts to sink.

Passengers and crew abandon the ship, but only 14 of the 16 people on board make it to the relative safety of the lifeboats. A rescue crew from the U.S. Coast Guard station at Elizabeth City, North Carolina pulls the survivors to safety aboard helicopters. They recover the body of one missing crewman, but Walbridge, the captain, is missing.

During the afternoon: Sandy brings high winds and drenching rains from Washington, D.C. northward, toppling trees and power lines and cutting off electrical power for millions of people. The storm eventually will affect more than 50 million people on the Eastern Seaboard.

8 p.m.:  Sandy’s center comes ashore near Atlantic City, New Jersey. The storm is no longer considered a hurricane but is now classified as a post-tropical nor’easter. But the storm’s unusual path from the southeast makes its storm surge much worse for New Jersey and New York. A cyclone’s strongest winds and highest storm surge are to the front and right of its circulation because the power of the storm’s strongest winds is combined with its forward motion. New York Harbor receives this part of Sandy’s impact.

The surge is worsened because the full moon has added about a foot to the surge and because Sandy arrives at high tide. Meteorologist Tim Morrin of the National Weather Service’s office in New York, tells National Geographic News that the surge — nearly 14 feet — is a new record for a storm surge in the harbor. The previous record of just over 10 feet was set in 1960 when Hurricane Donna passed just offshore.

The surge tops the seawall at The Battery in Lower Manhattan and floods parts of the city’s subway system. The surge also floods the Hugh Carey Tunnel, which links Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn.

The storm’s huge size means that its winds, rains and flooding will pound New Jersey and New York throughout the night and through three cycles of high tides and low tides.

Staten Island also is hit very hard by the storm. The Seattle Times later reports that towns such as Oakwood Beach, Midland Beach, South Beach and Tottenville — which lost many residents who were police and firefighters during the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 — were among the hardest-hit communities.

October 30
Although Sandy has started to move away from New York, the backside of the huge storm is still inflicting punishment on the Northeast. As the day progresses, Sandy weakens as it moves inland over Pennsylvania.

October 31
The storm that began as Hurricane Sandy dissipates over western Pennsylvania, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issues its final advisory on the storm. NOAA’s advisory says “multiple centers of circulation in association with the remnants of Sandy can be found across the lower Great Lakes.”

NOAA reports that Sandy killed more than 70 people in the Caribbean and at least 50 in the United States. NOAA estimates that Sandy caused at least $20 billion in damages.

Update, November 3
NBC News reports that the death toll in the U.S. is now 109, including at least 40 in New York City. Half of New York’s deaths are on Staten Island. NBC also reports that damages from Hurricane Sandy likely will exceed $50 billion.

Willie Drye has been writing about hurricanes and other topics for National Geographic News since 2003. Follow his blog, Drye Goods.

The highest storm surges are most likely to occur tonight through Tuesday morning during high tide. Major coastal flooding causing road closures, inundation and damage to structures is expected along the coasts of New Jersey; Long Island, New York; Connecticut and the southern coast of Massachusetts. The highest water levels are likely to occur from northeastern New Jersey through the western Long Island Sound in New York.

Minor to moderate coastal flooding is expected from eastern Massachusetts northward, resulting in flooded basements, road overwash, and some structural damage.

The highest storm surge, around 12 feet, is expected from Sandy Hook, New Jersey through the western Long Island Sound, including Raritan Bay and New York Harbor.

A storm surge of four to eight feet is expected along the coast of central and southern New Jersey, and from eastern Connecticut to the southern shore of Rhode Island.

Hurricane and tropical storm force winds will continue overnight into Tuesday from the Delmarva Peninsula through New Jersey, Long Island and the southern New England coast. Hurricane-force winds are at least 74 mph, while tropical-storm-force winds are from 39 mph to 73 mph.

Hurricane-force winds will extend as far as 175 miles from the storm’s center, while tropical-storm-force winds will extend as far as 485 miles from the storm’s center.

Once Sandy has made landfall, the storm will move slowly through central Pennsylvania Tuesday afternoon and Tuesday night, with maximum winds decreasing from about 70 mph to about 50 mph by Tuesday night.

The storm’s remnants will move through New York state Wednesday night with winds around 40 mph.

Major coastal flooding will worsen with the next high tide cycle this evening from Ocean City, Maryland to the coasts of New Jersey, Connecticut, and Rhode Island and the Long Island Sound and New York Harbor in New York.

Rainfall totals from Sandy will range from six inches to 14 inches, and could be more on the Delmarva Peninsula and in New Jersey.

Estimated rainfall amounts at cities on the East Coast since Friday included: Norfolk, Virginia, 5 to 6 inches; Washington, D.C. 2 to 4 inches; Baltimore, 3 to 5 inches; Dover, Delaware, 6 to 8 inches; Philadelphia, 2 to 3 inches; Atlantic City, 4 to 6 inches.

The remnants of Hurricane Sandy and its effects could linger in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states through Thursday.

Willie Drye has been writing about hurricanes and other topics for National Geographic News since 2003. Follow his blog, Drye Goods.

The so-called Ash Wednesday Storm of March 1962 destroyed this house at Harvey Cedars, New Jersey. Like Hurricane Sandy, this storm's devastation was magnified by an unusual combination of meteorological factors that happened to converge. (Photo from Great Storms of the Jersey Shore, by Larry Savadove and Margaret Thomas Buchholz)

A phenomenal set of meteorological coincidences has turned Hurricane Sandy into an epic storm, but there have been a few other tempests that have greatly benefitted from similarly freakish conditions. And as bad as Hurricane Sandy will be, at least the technology is available to detect, monitor and track it. Earlier “storms of the century” were tracked with some educated guesswork — if at all.

Sandy is most often being compared to a powerful hurricane that struck Long Island, New York and New England as a Category 3 storm on September 21, 1938. The U.S. Weather Bureau — the predecessor to today’s National Weather Service and National Hurricane Center — knew a hurricane had formed in mid-September. The storm strengthened as it moved westward across the Atlantic and at one point its winds may have exceeded 155 mph.

But the hurricane veered away from the Caribbean and the Bahamas and moved northward off the Atlantic Coast. Hurricanes typically take a gradual turn to the northeast as they move up the East Coast. This hurricane turned away from Miami, Jacksonville, and other cities on the southeastern coast.

Something unusual happened, however, as the storm passed North Carolina. Two weather systems — low pressure over the eastern U.S., high pressure over the Atlantic Ocean likely to the east of the storm — prevented the hurricane from turning further out to sea and also caused the storm’s forward speed to dramatically increase.

The hurricane’s movement may have increased to as much as 70 mph — an unheard-of speed — as it raced up the East Coast. Although the storm had lost some from its fearsome intensity, its peak winds were still blowing at better than 120 mph.

Hurricanes usually weaken when they reach the cooler waters north of Cape Hatteras and the Gulf Stream. But storms that weaken are moving no faster than around 12 mph. This storm was essentially moving too fast to weaken. In his book Encyclopedia of Hurricanes, Typhoons and Cyclones, author David Longshore notes that the storm brushed Cape Hatteras just after dawn on September 21, 1938.

Before nightfall that same day, the hurricane slammed into Long Island — almost 400 miles away from Cape Hatteras – with winds that have been estimated as high as 130 mph.

The Weather Bureau badly misunderstood this storm. “As late as 2 p.m. September 21, when the storm had torn up Atlantic City’s boardwalk and was transporting entire houses across Long Island Sound, (the Weather Bureau) reported that the “tropical storm” was rapidly blowing out to sea,” author William Manchester wrote in The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932-1972.

Manchester said a man living on Long Island received a barometer in the mail that he’d ordered a few days earlier. When he opened the package, the instrument’s needle pointed to a reading of “Hurricanes and Tornadoes.” Thinking that the barometer was broken, the annoyed man left his home to go to the post office to mail it back.

“While he was gone, his house blew away,” Manchester wrote. “It happened that quickly.”

The hurricane, which came to be called the Long Island Express because of its uncanny speed, inflicted more devastation on New England. More than 700 people were killed, and the storm blew down enough trees to build 200,000 homes, Manchester wrote.

In March 1962, two storms merged to become a devastating nor’easter that caused havoc from North Carolina to New England.

On March 6, a powerful winter storm formed over Iowa and moved eastward, dumping more than two feet of snow in some places. In Great Storms of the Jersey Shore, authors Larry Savadove and Margaret Buchholz said that the storm brought snow to Alabama, and in Miami the temperature dropped to 31 degrees.

Meanwhile, another storm formed off the coast of Georgia. The Iowa storm merged with the Georgia storm. Then the hybrid storm stalled, “held in place by a cold front that had moved down from Canada,” Savadove and Buchholz said.

The storm, which is now known as the Ash Wednesday Storm, pushed up waves as high as 30 feet in the open water of the Atlantic. The waves were pushed ashore at “freight train” speed, and their height was helped a little by a full moon.

The storm furiously pounded the New Jersey shore. The snow turned to hail in some places, and winds were at near-hurricane force of 73 mph. The USS Monssen, a Navy destroyer, was shoved onto a beach at Holgate, New Jersey. One New Jersey state official quipped that “Monmouth and Ocean counties haven’t been in such peril since the Battle of Monmouth (during the American Revolution).”

Willie Drye has been writing about hurricanes and other topics for National Geographic News since 2003. Follow his blog, Drye Goods.

Sandy is expected to stay well offshore for the next two days as it moves northeastward. By Monday morning, the center of the storm is expected to be be about 220 miles (354 kilometers) east-southeast of Norfolk, Virginia. At that point, however, the hurricane is expected to make a sharp turn to the northwest on a path that would take it toward the Chesapeake Bay and major U.S. cities such as Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Philadelphia.

Keith Blackwell, a meteorologist at the University of South Alabama’s Coastal Weather Research Center in Mobile, said the storm’s hard left turn could be caused by a high-pressure system over Greenland. This system is likely to prevent the storm from continuing on a path that would keep it over the Atlantic and away from the East Coast, Blackwell said.

Hurricane Sandy also is likely to merge with the jet stream, giving it a powerful boost of energy as it heads toward a likely landfall early Tuesday morning around the Delmarva Peninsula just south of New Jersey. The storm is expected to make landfall as a Category 1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale, which ranks storms from one to five based on maximum wind speeds and destructive potential.

A Category 1 hurricane has peak winds of 74 mph (120 kph) to 95 mph (153 kph).

“It will get a huge amount of energy from the jet stream,” Blackwell said. “As it incorporates more and more with the jet stream, it will strengthen again as it moves up off the East Coast.

The hurricane also is likely to increase in size, spreading its destruction over a very wide area, Blackwell said.

As of 2 p.m. today, Hurricane Sandy’s eye was near Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas. The storm had peak winds of about 75 mph (120 kph), and was moving north at about 7 mph (11 kph).

Meteorologists have compared Hurricane Sandy to the so-called “Perfect Storm” of October 1991. That storm also encountered conditions that were unusually favorable for strengthening and caused heavy destruction from North Carolina to Canada.

Willie Drye has been writing about hurricanes and other topics for National Geographic News since 2003. Visit his blog, Drye Goods.

Underwater archaeologist Lisa Briggs points to a fleck of gold dust she recently recovered from the wreck of the pirate Blackbeard's ship, the Queen Anne's Revenge. The ship ran aground near Beaufort, North Carolina in 1718.

A spur-of-the-moment donation today of $32,500 allowed the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources to meet its fund-raising goal of $450,000 to continue excavating the wreckage of the Queen Anne’s Revenge, the flagship of the legendary 18th-century pirate Blackbeard.

The contribution from Rita and Eric Bigham, a retired couple who divide their time between Chapel Hill and the small beach town of Beaufort, came at a special gathering at the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort. NCDCR officials scheduled the assembly to announce that they were within sight of their goal and to display a few of the thousands of artifacts that have been recovered from the wreck since it was discovered in 1996.

The Bighams were in the audience when NCDCR Secretary Linda Carlisle announced that her agency was just shy of reaching its goal. Moments after the assembly ended, Carlisle learned that the Bighams were willing to contribute the money to reach the goal.

“We weren’t planning to do this,” Eric Bigham, a retired chemist, said after the donation was announced.

Rita Bigham, a retired teacher, said she and her husband decided to make the contribution because they wanted to see work completed at the Queen Anne’s Revenge site.

Cuts in the state’s budget that followed the economic downturn of 2008 greatly reduced funding for underwater archaeology work at the Queen Anne’s Revenge wreck site.

The ship ran aground a few miles offshore from Beaufort in 1718. Historians think Blackbeard may have deliberately grounded the ship so he could disband his crew of 400 pirates and have his pick of the treasure accumulated during his brief but lucrative career in piracy.

Blackbeard, whose real name may have been Edward Thatch or Edward Teach, became a pirate after the War of Spanish Succession from 1701 to 1714. In 1716, he took command of a captured French ship that had been used to haul slaves from Africa to the Caribbean. He re-named the ship the Queen Anne’s Revenge. His exploits included holding the entire city of Charleston, South Carolina for ransom, and he became so feared among sailors that the mere sight of his ships often was enough to make other vessels surrender.

After grounding his ship in 1718, Blackbeard lived briefly in the coastal town of Bath, a colonial capital of North Carolina. He became known in Bath for his free-spending and his pledge to help the town economically.

Although the colony’s governor, Charles Eden, pardoned Blackbeard for his piracy, he was still a wanted man outside North Carolina. In late 1718, Blackbeard was killed in a battle with British warships in Ocracoke Inlet.

Despite his reputation as a ruthless killer, many eastern North Carolina residents consider Blackbeard something of a hometown boy. And the long-ago pirate is still bringing money into the state. When a special exhibit of artifacts from the Queen Anne’s Revenge opened at the North Carolina Maritime Museum last year, it drew 50,000 visitors during its first month.

North Carolina Governor Beverly Perdue, who attended the gathering in Beaufort, noted Blackbeard’s lasting legacy to the state.

“He was a slimy old man, but we’re glad he dumped his ship here,” Perdue told the audience.

State political and tourism leaders, aware of the international interest sparked by the discovery and excavation of the Queen Anne’s Revenge and the public’s fascination with Blackbeard, did not want to suspend the excavation work because of the economic downturn. The effort to find private donors so the work could continue began in November 2011.

Underwater archaeologists have brought up some prize artifacts, including gold dust, sword handles, and rare French apothecary weights. But Steve Claggett, North Carolina’s State Archaeologist, said some of the less spectacular artifacts are poignant reminders of how the ship was used before it became a pirate vessel.

Claggett said divers have found many small glass beads that were used in the slave trade in Africa in the 18th century. The beads — about the size of a nail head — were produced in the Netherlands and Italy. European traders used the beads as currency to buy Africans who had been captured and sold into slavery, he said.

Lisa Briggs, an underwater archaeologist who is working at the Queen Anne’s Revenge wreck, said the opportunity to work on Blackbeard’s ship drew her away from a project in Cyprus. Although she has found gold and other artifacts at the site, she also has brought up chunks of concretions — a stone-like encrustation that forms around artifacts that are submerged in water for a long time. The concretions can contain many artifacts, which must be carefully removed in a process that can take years.

“What’s cool about this site is that you might not know for years what you’ve found,” Briggs said. “You may have found an amazing artifact.”

The $450,000 in private donations will allow work to continue at the Queen Anne’s Revenge through 2014. Other financial contributers include Grady White Boats, Bucky and Wendi Oliver of Beaufort, the Archaeological Institute of America, the Cannon Foundation, the Marion Stedman Covington Foundation, and the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation.

Willie Drye is a contributing editor for National Geographic News. Visit his blog, Drye Goods.

Five-day forecast for track of Tropical Storm Isaac, released by NWS National Hurricane Center on Thursday, August 30.

After making landfall Tuesday as a Category 1 hurricane in southeastern Louisiana, Tropical Storm Isaac’s slow crawl northward from the Gulf Coast is causing significant flooding and some wind damage, as well as a threat of tornadoes.

“The slow motion has been exacerbating the problem here,” said Keith Blackwell, meteorologist at the University of South Alabama’s Coastal Weather Research Center in Mobile. “It just won’t leave.”

Isaac came ashore late Tuesday afternoon with 80 mph winds near the mouth of the Mississippi River. The storm weakened some after landfall, but as of 11 a.m. today still had tropical-storm-force winds of 40 mph. The storm’s center was about 100 miles north-northwest of Baton Rouge, Louisiana and was moving north-northwest at about 9 mph.

The storm is expected to continue weakening, but will bring heavy rains to the upper Midwest early next week.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami released a bulletin this morning warning of a “significant” flood threat as Isaac moves slowly northward during the upcoming Labor Day weekend. The storm could bring seven to 14 inches of rain during its trek, and some places may see as much as 25 inches before Isaac has departed.

The NHC also warned of high water levels along the Gulf Coast. And although Isaac is weakening, the NHC noted that the threat of tornadoes being spun off the storm is increasing.

Bob Wagner, a meteorologist at the Baton Rouge-New Orleans National Weather Service office in Slidell, Louisiana, said flooding could continue in his area for two days or longer.

The “extremely heavy rainfall” from Isaac has caused serious flooding problems in southeastern Louisiana, Wagner said.

“I’m not aware of any people on rooftops, but there’s water in homes, roads are closed, and there’s a signficant amount of water in some neighborhoods,” Wagner said.

The New York Times reported today that New Orleans had escaped “major damage” from Isaac, but that much of the city is without power because of fallen trees.

Keith Williams, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Mobile, said some areas of southeastern Mississippi had received as much as 17 inches of rain. Tornado watches have been issued for much of the Gulf Coast, including Mobile, Williams said.

Blackwell, the Coastal Weather Research Center meteorologist, said Isaac’s slow movement as it made landfall had pushed saltwater far into the drought-depleted Mississippi River. The Times-Picayune newspaper of New Orleans reported that locally maintained levees have failed and caused flooding in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, where the Mississippi flows into the Gulf of Mexico.

Blackwell said Isaac’s low-rating as a Category 1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale — which rates hurricanes from one to five based on their wind speeds and destructive potential — was misleading. The storm was gaining strength as it came ashore, he said.

“Isaac wasn’t more severe than was anticipated, but it could have been much worse,” Blackwell said.

Willie Drye has been writing about hurricanes and other topics for National Geographic News since 2003. Visit his blog, Drye Goods.