What is the difference between sandy and irene

Hurricane Sandy prompted a series of mandatory evacuation orders along the eastern seaboard Saturday, including New Jersey's barrier islands, casinos in Atlantic City and New York's Fire Island. The most severe impact of the storm is expected to occur on Monday evening. You may change your billing preferences at any time in the Customer Center or call Customer Service.

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The East Coast is expected to experience heavy rainfall, gusty winds, high surf, beach erosion and some coastal flooding because of the storm.

If it does, Joaquin may become the most serious meteorological threat to the state since Superstorm Sandy. Satellite image of Hurricane Sandy as the eye approaches Jamaica on October 24, As Hurricane Sandy moved northward, it hit Cuba as a Category 3 hurricane and then was downgraded to a Category 2 as it moved along the eastern seaboard. Before it made landfall, Sandy was measured as the largest Atlantic hurricane on record, with winds spanning 1, miles in diameter. Sandy officially made landfall at 8 pm after downgrading to a post-tropical cyclone.

Sandy reached Atlantic City on October 29, , as a post-tropical cyclone with 80 mph winds. Hurricane Irene forms an eye over the Caribbean in this satellite image taken on August 24, When Hurricane Irene formed an eye above , winds were recorded at to mph. In some places, as much as 14' of erosion occurred along this length of shoreline. Where the shoreline was piled up with oyster shells, the erosion rate was significantly lower at around 4' compared to riprap areas.

So, although the erosion still took place, oyster-protected shorelines are usually subject to less erosion. Figure 5. Most of these shells were deposited back in the bay after they were shucked in the shucking houses that once lined the shores of Franklin City, Virginia.

In contrast, and although Hurricane Sandy was similarly scaled in wind speed and size to Irene, ultimately it was much more impactful further north to New York and New Jersey primarily because of the storm track it took and the orientation of the shoreline where the storm made landfall.

Whereas Irene's track was parallel to shore, Sandy's approach was more perpendicular with landfall approach toward the northwest. In this way, not only was the brunt of the storm's energy focused on the shoreline, but the geomorphic configuration of the shoreline and the shallow nature of the inner shelf led to amplification of the storm surge as outlined in the previous module.

As the storm crossed the shelf-slope break, it downgraded from a Category 2 hurricane to a Category 1 hurricane, and even degraded to a tropical storm before it came ashore. However, because of its trajectory at nearly a right angle to the shoreline, the full fury of the storm was released on the shoreline of New Jersey and New York.

The wedge-shaped shoreline entering the Hudson River Embayment helped to funnel the waters into the embayment leading to higher and higher storm surge levels.

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