On This Day in 2012: Hurricane Sandy Makes Landfall in New Jersey | WeatherBug
Main Menu
Responsive menu icon

On This Day in 2012: Hurricane Sandy Makes Landfall in New Jersey

October 30, 2020
By WeatherBug's Chris Sayles
Nearly ten years have passed since one of the most destructive storms crashed into the Jersey Shore. Hurricane Sandy broke records and infrastructures across the Mid-Atlantic on this day in 2012.

As an atypical late-season tropical system, what would become "Sandy" began as a tropical wave sweeping across the warm waters of the Caribbean after trekking across the Atlantic Ocean. It was first identified as early as October 11, 2012. However, the system did not organize into a tropical depression until October 22 in the Caribbean Sea. The system would intensify into Hurricane Sandy on October 24 and would make its first landfall.

Sandy would cross over the island of Jamaica as a Category 1 hurricane with winds estimated at 85 mph. However, the storm would re-enter the warm waters of the Caribbean and would begin to rapidly intensify into a Category 3 hurricane with winds of 115 mph and a central pressure of 954 mb or 28.20 inches of mercury. This would make Sandy a major hurricane as the storm’s next target, Cuba, felt the brunt of the storm.

Hurricane Sandy would travel towards the Northeastern U.S. thanks to a well-defined trough that would guide the storm further on its destructive path in the Atlantic Basin. In fact, atmospheric conditions would deform the system into something quite interesting. Instead of Sandy displaying characteristics of a typical tropical system, the storm would transform into a system like a mid-latitude cyclone, losing its well-defined eye. 

This would lead to the storm being dubbed “Superstorm Sandy”, but it would still be considered a Category 2 hurricane with winds of 100 mph. On October 29, this superstorm would make its final landfall along the New Jersey coast near the city of Brigantine with estimated winds of 85 mph. 

Storm surge over 13 feet led to extensive damages in New York, Sandy Hook, N.J., and Philadelphia. Sandy was also deemed the largest storm in diameter with an estimated length of 1,150 miles. Record damages approaching $70 billion was sustained from “Superstorm Sandy,” and over 200 lives was lost. As a result, the name “Sandy” would be retired from the Atlantic naming list.

Sources: NOAA, NWS, NASA

Story Image: The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite acquired this image of Hurricane Sandy off the southeastern United States. (NASA/Wikimedia Commons)