Centennial Honors College
Western Illinois University
Undergraduate Research Day 2014
Poster Presentation
Factors Leading Hurricane Sandy to make Landfall
Ryan Sutera
Faculty Mentor: Jongnam Choi
Meteorology
Hurricane Sandy made landfall along the New Jersey shoreline on October 29, 2012.
This hurricane brought $50 million in damage and took 72 lives, while Hurricane Earl
during August 25 – September 4, 2010 did take a similar track up the east coast but it
did not make land fall. This study examines which atmospheric conditions made
Hurricane Sandy travel so far north. In order to determine favorable conditions for the
steering of the two Hurricanes; Temperature, pressure, winds, and specific humidity at
both surface and pressure levels at 1000hPa, 850 hPa, 500hPa and 300hPa and the
maps of the departure of above variables from the long-term normal were constructed
using the reanalysis gridded data from the NCEP/NCAR data archive. Unidata’s
Integrated Data Viewer (IDV) was used to analyze and create composite data and
maps. The preliminary results show that the patterns of sea surface temperature,
temperature anomalies between land and ocean, and upper-air conditions are quite
different for both Hurricanes. Findings from this study enable meteorologists to make a
better prediction on path of Hurricane at Northeast coast of the United States.