Frankenstorm
People have started referring to the result of Hurricane Sandy joining with the Nor’easter currently moving towards the coast as Frankenstorm – alluding to the fact that it will be made up of parts of multiple storms and is likely to be a ‘monster’.
The CBC has a nice introduction to what is going on: ‘Frankenstorm’ may be headed for Eastern Canada, U.S., and Wikipedia covers the Halloween Nor’easter of 1991, the last time this happened.
This will be different than the 1991 event because that storm stayed in the Atlantic, while this one is coming ashore.
In a bit of serendipity, xkcd has a comic strip today that covers the end of the 2005 hurricane season when they ran out of names and had to use the Greek alphabet. The captions are actual statements by forecasters in their public advisories. It gives you a sense of how abnormal/different things have become in recent years.
Some people think the weather forecasters are overestimating the impact of this storm. I would point out that the last time I have read warnings like this from the National Weather Service was for Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Hope for the best, but take this sucker seriously.
