Hurricane Sandy . . . Mark Two?

Cristobal may be gone, but hurricane season lingers on . . ..

I don't know when I started getting apprehensive about the weather.  Maybe it was when I started watching the Weather Channel and became aware of just how extreme weather can be, even though I mainly started watching it because I had a crush on Vivian Brown.  (Still do. :-) ) 

And then came the 1993 winter superstorm, the brutal winters of 1993-94 and 1995-96, and the flooding from Tropical Storm Floyd in 1999.  Until it happened in February 2010, I didn't worry about a snowstorm knocking out our electricity.  Until it happened a month later, I didn't expect a nor'easter rainstorm to drop a tree on our garage roof.  Until August 2011, I never thought a tropical cyclone would make a direct landfall in New Jersey, and then came Irene.  Because I never thought snow in October was a big deal, since I remember October snowfalls as a kid, I shrugged off snow expected at the end of October 2011 . . . until it knocked out our power for three days.  Since Irene was the only tropical storm to have made landfall in New Jersey since 1903, I didn't expect it to happen again any time soon . . . until Sandy.

Now, it seems, another hurricane directly hitting New Jersey can't be ruled out.

While everyone is bemoaning the prediction for another cold winter for 2014-15 in the Farmer's Almanac, a prediction for the coming month caught my mention and hasn't let go since.  It seems the Farmer's Almanac is also predicting that another hurricane will hit the Garden State in September 2014 . . . and that's not far off.  The almanac predicts that it will be as intense as Sandy and follow the same trajectory.  Although it looks like there won't be so many tropical storms and hurricanes this season, it only takes one storm, of course, to ruin everything.

Of course, the Farmer's Almanac also predicted a hot, humid, rainy summer for my neck of the woods, and that was wrong; I've spent more time on my bike than at the local indoor pool this summer.  So maybe the Farmer's Almanac is wrong about a September hurricane for this area.  But I have reason to suspect that a hurricane might - might - strike New Jersey in mid-September as predicted . . . and it has nothing to do with the Farmer's Almanac's self-professed 80 percent accuracy rate.  First, all of the three storms that have formed so far in 2014 (out of four tropical depressions) reached hurricane status - that is, they all generated winds stronger than 74 miles an hour.  Second, they all followed a northeasterly path along the U.S. East Coast.  Third, areas traditionally susceptible to hurricanes have been in less danger of late.  Florida, for example, hasn't had a direct hit since 2005.  But the common storm trajectory seems to be leading farther up the East Coast, and it seems to be putting the Northeast in particular in greater danger.

The law of averages is clearly tipping against the Garden State, as well as other northeastern locales.

I'm all tapped out by this extreme weather.  There'll be more of it in years to come, and it looks to get worse before it gets even worse, thanks to climate change.  It's only a matter of time before we get hit again, whether it happens in a month or in a year, and next time we could even get a storm that makes Sandy look like a run-of-the-mill summer thunderstorm.

Of course, summer thunderstorms aren't so run-of-the-mill anymore.

Vivian Brown, where are you when I need you?