Hurricane Sandy kills 41 in Caribbean, targets US

The meteorologists said such a combination of adverse weather conditions could affect the area through Halloween on October 31, “inviting perhaps a ghoulish nickname for the cyclone along the lines of Frankenstorm.”

The NHC said Sandy was packing winds of up to 150km per hour as it moved north, near the top of the Category One range on the five-point Saffir-Simpson wind scale.

The Bahamas were still bearing the brunt of the storm, with power and phone lines downed, tourists stranded and trees uprooted. Schools, government offices, airports and bridges were to be closed on Thursday and Friday.

At 21:00 GMT, the eye of the hurricane was near Cat Island in the Central Bahamas – about 100km southeast of Eleuthera – and its wind field was “expanding.” Sandy was moving north at 30km per hour.

“You should be getting ready to get indoors, locked up and locked down until the storm has really passed us,” Bahamas meteorologist Geoffrey Greene was quoted as saying in The Nassau Guardian.

Nine people died in Santiago, including a four-month old infant who was among four people who perished when a house caved in.

Five more people in the province died during the storm for unspecified reasons, while two people in Guantanamo were killed by falling trees.

On Wednesday, Sandy unleashed its wrath on Jamaica, where one person died, and in Haiti, where nine people were killed and three others reported missing.

The hurricane also affected the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, where 167 “terrorism suspects” are held.

Preliminary hearings for the accused al-Qaeda mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole were delayed.

Coming in the final weeks before the presidential election on November 6, the storm could throw last-minute campaign travel plans into chaos.

An aide to Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney said he had canceled a campaign event scheduled for Sunday night in Virginia Beach, Virginia. The Obama campaign said it was closely monitoring the storm.

The Democratic incumbent was traveling to New Hampshire on Saturday and on Monday was due to visit Youngstown, Ohio, and Orlando, Florida.
 
In Florida, authorities were already on alert for tropical storm conditions, warning residents to prepare an emergency plan and supplies.
Schools in the state’s southern counties of Palm Beach, Miami-Dade and Broward were closed for the rest of the week.

International flights from major airports in the state were kept on schedule, though some headed to or coming from Caribbean destinations were suspended.

Warnings about a possible “Frankenstorm” revived memories of the so-called “Perfect Storm” in 1991 that killed 13 people and caused $200m in damages to the northeastern United States in late October and early November.

“The potential is there for a significant storm,” Brad Panovich, WCNC-TV chief meteorologist, in Charlotte, North Carolina wrote on Facebook.

“This system is one part hurricane, one part nor’easter and one part blizzard potentially. Impacts of all three types of storms are possible depending on location.”

The National Weather Service in Philadelphia noted that the storm will be slow-moving, which “worsens the impact for coastal flooding as it will affect multiple high-tide cycles”.
 
Source: THE TIMES OF EARTH ( www.timesofearth.com)