12 years ago - Super Storm Sandy anniversary

On October 29, 2012, Superstorm Sandy rammed ashore in New Jersey near Atlantic City, making history along the East Coast and in the Meteorology world.

Sandy first made landfall on October 25th in Cuba as a Major Category 3 hurricane before it moved up the East Coast for the next four days. It made landfall in the U.S. as a post-tropical cyclone near Atlantic City, N.J., on the 29th. Sandy comes in second place, just under Katrina (2005), for the costliest storm on record, racking up more than $68 billion in damages.

Due to being both a hurricane and then making landfall in New Jersey as a post-tropical cyclone, Sandy gained its forever descriptor, Super Storm. Let's break down what a Super Storm is in this case.

NOAA puts it perfectly; "summer and winter weather conditions collided with extreme forces." Sandy was a true hurricane feeding off of the warm, tropical waters of the western Caribbean in late October, but as it moved up the East Coast, its energy was derived from more wintry attributes in the Northeast, which caused the change to a post-tropical cyclone, dubbed by the National Hurricane Center.

Sandy had a wind field of 1,000 miles, which caused deadly storm surge. Locals in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast remember the evacuation warnings ahead of devastating flooding, heavy snow in the mountains of Tennessee, Maryland and West Virginia, and millions of homes without power from the Carolinas to Maine, even through Halloween. The name "Sandy" was retired from the National Hurricane Center's list of names after its deadly impacts and is forever known by its descriptor, Super Storm.

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