Hurricane Sandy: The $100 Billion Storm

Information about Hurricane Sandy is coming in so fast & furious today that I can't keep up. Also we're getting ready to cut to Generator power at AccuWeather, due to the commercial power blinking, and I may lose power at home. So, please stay tuned to AccuWeather.com for official information, and monitor my Facebook Page for extreme weather updates through the week. A few bullet points from that page this afternoon:

- Winds just gusted to 86 mph at an amateur station in Rhode Island. As of 3 PM those are the highest gusts that I have seen.

- The storm strengthened this morning, more than some people expected, but not more than the models did. It fell to 943 mb, which does not break the Northwest Atlantic pressure record, set by Hurricane Gladys in 1975. It is currently progged to come in below 28.10" into New Jersey (GFS) which would break most city & state records in that area (more on record low pressures here).

- As a result of the strengthening, we have increased our wind gust forecast to 100 mph for the shore.

- There is remarkable model consistency this morning, thank goodness for small favors.

- Delaware Bay at Cape May surpassed its record gauge height from Hurricane Gloria in 1985 and Hurricane Irene in 2011, early this morning.