Hurricane Sandy (2012): Superstorm Hits New York and New Jersey

Hurricane Sandy was a huge late-season Atlantic hurricane that swept through the Caribbean and then struck the north-eastern United States on 29 October 2012. Merging with other weather systems to become a vast hybrid “superstorm”, it drove a record storm surge into New Jersey and New York City, flooding subway tunnels, cutting power to millions and destroying thousands of homes. It killed more than 230 people in eight countries and became one of the costliest storms in US history.

Formation and the Caribbean

Sandy developed from a tropical wave in the western Caribbean and became a tropical storm on 22 October 2012. It strengthened into a hurricane before making landfall in Jamaica on 24 October, then crossed eastern Cuba early on 25 October near Santiago de Cuba, where it reached its peak sustained winds of about 115 miles per hour (185 km/h).

Although the eye passed west of Hispaniola, days of torrential rain caused severe flooding in Haiti, still recovering from the 2010 earthquake; 54 people died there directly. Cuba suffered 11 deaths and heavy damage, and the storm also caused deaths in Jamaica, the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas.

An unusual track

After passing the Bahamas, Sandy moved north-east, parallel to the US coast. Most Atlantic storms then turn out to sea. Instead, a strong area of high pressure over Greenland blocked its path, and a trough of low pressure moving across the United States drew it back westward towards the coast, an extremely rare left turn.

As it interacted with these systems, Sandy grew enormously. At its widest, its tropical-storm-force winds covered a diameter of around 1,850 kilometres (1,150 miles), making it the largest Atlantic hurricane on record by that measure. Forecasters warned days ahead of a dangerous landfall, and the media labelled it a “Frankenstorm” because of its approach just before Halloween.

Landfall and the storm surge

Sandy lost its tropical structure shortly before landfall and came ashore near Brigantine, New Jersey, just north of Atlantic City, at about 7:30 p.m. on 29 October, with sustained winds of about 80 miles per hour (130 km/h). Its central pressure, about 945 millibars, was among the lowest ever recorded for a storm landfall north of Cape Hatteras.

The greatest danger was the storm surge, the rise in sea level pushed ashore by the wind. Because Sandy’s broad winds blew straight into the funnel-shaped New York Bight, and the surge arrived with a high tide at full moon, water levels reached record heights. At the Battery at the southern tip of Manhattan, the water rose to about 14 feet (4.3 metres) above the normal low-tide level, breaking the record of about 10 feet set by Hurricane Donna in 1960.

New York and New Jersey

In New York City, seawater poured into the subway system, flooding seven tunnels under the East River, as well as road tunnels and the World Trade Center construction site. An explosion at a Con Edison substation left most of Lower Manhattan without power for several days. Hospitals including Bellevue and NYU Langone had to evacuate hundreds of patients, some carried down darkened stairwells by staff when backup generators failed. The New York Stock Exchange closed for two days, the first weather-related closure of that length since 1888. On Staten Island and in the Rockaways the surge destroyed whole streets, and in Breezy Point, Queens, a fire burned more than 120 homes. About 43-44 people died in New York City.

The New Jersey shore was devastated. The surge cut new inlets through barrier islands such as Mantoloking, and wrecked boardwalks and amusement piers in towns including Seaside Heights, where a roller coaster was left standing in the ocean. Across the region about 8.5 million customers lost power, some for more than two weeks, and long queues formed at petrol stations. A nor’easter on 7-8 November brought snow and further misery to areas still without power.

In all, the National Hurricane Center counted 72 direct deaths in the United States, many of them by drowning, and at least 87 indirect deaths, from causes such as falling trees, carbon monoxide poisoning and accidents during the clean-up.

Was Sandy linked to climate change?

Scientists were careful about attributing a single storm to climate change. The unusual westward track was caused by the particular arrangement of weather systems that week, and studies disagreed about whether such patterns were becoming more frequent.

There was broader agreement on one point: sea level at New York had risen by about 30 centimetres (roughly a foot) over the previous century, partly because of global warming and partly because the land in the region is slowly sinking. That higher starting point made Sandy’s surge reach further inland and flood more property than an identical storm would have done a century earlier. This argument became central to later planning for coastal defences.

Response and politics

The storm struck a week before the US presidential election. President Barack Obama and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Republican, toured the damage together, an image of bipartisan cooperation that drew wide attention. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Michael Bloomberg led the response in New York.

In January 2013 Congress passed the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act, providing about 50 billion US dollars for recovery, after a political dispute over its size and timing. US damage was estimated at about 65 billion dollars at the time, making Sandy the second-costliest US hurricane after Hurricane Katrina, a ranking later overtaken by the hurricanes of 2017.

Rebuilding and resilience

Sandy shifted the debate about coastal cities and rising sea levels. The federal government launched the “Rebuild by Design” competition in 2013, which funded projects such as a system of flood barriers and parks around Lower Manhattan, later developed as the East Side Coastal Resiliency project. New York State offered buyouts of homes in the most flood-prone areas, and the subway authority spent years repairing and floodproofing tunnels. Building codes and flood maps were revised to account for higher water levels.

On the New Jersey shore, the US Army Corps of Engineers built or rebuilt wide beaches and dunes along much of the coast, after it was noticed that towns with high, engineered dunes had generally suffered less damage than those without them. Many homeowners raised their houses on new foundations several feet higher. Recovery was uneven, however: some lower-income residents waited years for repairs, and audits criticised delays and errors in parts of the state and federal rebuilding programmes.

Timeline

• 2012, 22 October: Sandy forms as a tropical storm in the Caribbean.
• 2012, 24 October: Sandy makes landfall in Jamaica as a hurricane.
• 2012, 25 October: Sandy crosses eastern Cuba at peak strength.
• 2012, 29 October: Sandy comes ashore near Brigantine, New Jersey; record surge floods New York City.
• 2012, 2 November: The remnants of Sandy finally dissipate.
• 2012, 7-8 November: A nor’easter hits the storm-damaged region.
• 2013, 29 January: President Obama signs the Sandy relief bill.

Why it matters

Hurricane Sandy showed that even a storm with relatively modest wind speeds could cause catastrophic damage to a densely populated coast through sheer size and storm surge. It exposed the vulnerability of New York’s transport and power systems and became a turning point in how American cities plan for flooding and sea-level rise.