Analyzing Hurricane Sandy

Post-tropical Storm Sandy underwent extratropical transition shortly before making landfall in southern New Jersey October 29 2012. Data from this system was compared with data from Hurricane Ike (2008) which represents a classic hurricane with a clear eye wall and symmetry after landfall. Storm Sandy collided with a low pressure system coming in from the north as the hurricane made landfall on the US East coast. This contributed to Storm Sandy acting as a non-typical hurricane when it made landfall. Time histories of wind speed and wind direction were generated from data provided by Texas Tech's StickNet probes for both storms. The NOAA Weather and Climate program were used to generate radar loops of reflectivity during the landfall for both storms; these loops were compared with time histories for both Ike and Sandy to identify a relationship between time series data and storm-scale features identified on radar.