What Is This "Frankenstorm" Heading Our Way?

Weather, government and media folks have dubbed the tropical storm heading north along the Atlantic Coast a “Frankenstorm” due to the convergence of extreme weather factors.

when one of the world's three top computer-model weather simulations showed Sandy getting mixed up with a storm from the Midwest, a high-pressure system out of Greenland and a dip in the jet stream—turning it into a combination cyclone/nor'easter and pushing it toward land.

".. think if a hurricane and nor'easter mated, possibly spawning a very rare and powerful hybrid storm, slamming into the Boston-to-Washington corridor early next week, with rain, inland snow, damaging winds, and potential storm surge flooding," said Andrew Freedman, blogging for Climate Central on Monday.

Since then, more and more models have projected that very thing. The National Weather Service said the official forecast and the computer-model simulations had reached consensus.

But, forecasts are still conflicted on Hurricane Sandy's exact track, said Weatherbug Meteorologist Andrew Rosenthal.

"One scenario merges Sandy with a Midwest upper-level low pressure, tracking it sharply into the Mid-Atlantic. Most others merge it with the same upper-level disturbance off Cape Cod early next week, flinging it back to the southern New England Coast and New York City area," Rosenthal wrote for the Weatherbug Hurricane Center at 5 a.m. Oct. 26.

Sandy is already dangerous. The hurricane has killed 28 people across the Caribbean, Fox News reported this morning.

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration is comparing Hurricane Sandy to two storms: the Great Gale of 1878 and Hurricane Hazel in 1954, the Boston Herald reports. The Great Gale was a Category 2 hurricane that hit regions from Cuba to New England, said the Huffington Post. Hurricane Hazel killed 1,000 people in Haiti, then hit the U.S. between North Carolina and South Carolina and killed 95 more.

Details of importance to meteorologists—such as Sandy's classification—are not essential knowledge for the layman, the NWS pointed out in its discussion of the forecast at 11 a.m. Oct. 26. "Whether Sandy is officially tropical or post-tropical at landfall will have little bearing on the impacts," the NWS said. It also reminded users not to focus on the track predictions late in the period of the forecast because the storm is big enough and complex enough to affect the U.S. from Florida to Maine: "... Sandy is expected to bring impacts to a large part of the U.S. East Coast into early next week."