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"She's huge. She's strong and might get stronger. She's strange. She's directing the might of her storm surge right at New York City.\n\nHurricane Sandy has already caused her first damage in New York: The subway system will be shut as of 7 p.m. tonight. Meteorologists are scared, so city planners are scared.\nFor many, the hullabaloo raises memories of Irene, which despite causing $15.6 billion worth of damages in the United States, did not live up to its pre-arrival hype.\nBy almost all measures, this storm looks like it could be worse: higher winds, a path through a more populated area, worse storm surge, and a greater chance it'll linger. The atmospherics, you might say, all point to this being the worst storm in recent history.\nI've been watching weather nerds freak out about a few different graphs over the last several days, which they've sent around like sports fans would tweet a particularly vicious hit in the NFL. You don't want to look, but you also can't help it.\nRyan Maue, who runs a weather modeling firm, put out this animated GIF of the storm's approach yesterday. \"This is unprecedented \u2014absolutely stunning upper-level configuration pinwheeling #Sandy on-shore like ping-pong ball,\" he tweeted. It shows how cold air to the north and west of the storm spin Sandy into the mid-Atlantic coastline. (Nota bene: his models also show very high winds at skyscraper altitudes.)\n\nThis morning, the Wall Street Journal's Eric Holthaus (@WSJweather), tweeted the following map. \"Oh my.... I have never seen so much purple on this graphic. By far. Never,\" he said. \"Folks, please take this storm seriously.\" The storm is strong *and* huge. And when it encounters the cold air from the north and west, it will develop renewed strength thanks to that interaction, a process known as \"baroclinic enhancement.\"\n\nThis last graphic I created from National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration data that has weather watchers worried. It shows the probability of a greater than six foot storm surge \u00A0in and around New York City. Hurricane Irene, by comparison, caused a four foot surge.\n\nNote that the highest probabilities are focused tightly around New York City, which also happens to be the most densely populated area in the country. That's a very bad combination. Jeff Masters, author of the must-read storm blog Wunderground, laid out the general problem.\n\"[According to last night's forecast], the destructive potential of the storm surge was exceptionally high: 5.7 on a scale of 0 to 6,\" he wrote. \"This is a higher destructive potential than any hurricane observed between 1969 - 2005, including Category 5 storms like Katrina, Rita, Wilma, Camille, and Andrew.\"\nSpecifically, New York City's infrastructure may take an unprecedented hit. The subway narrowly escaped flooding during Irene, and Sandy (for all the reasons above) is expected to be worse. So...\n\"According to the latest storm surge forecast for NYC from NHC, Sandy's storm surge is expected to be several feet higher than Irene's. If the peak surge arrives near Monday evening's high tide at 9 pm EDT, a portion of New York City's subway system could flood, resulting in billions of dollars in damage,\" Masters concluded. \"I give a 50% chance that Sandy's storm surge will end up flooding a portion of the New York City subway system.\"\nThis story was originally published in The Atlantic."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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