Superstorm
Sandy second worst storm
This GOES-13 satellite image was captured on Oct. 31 at 1240 UTC as Sandy's circulation was winding down over Pennsylvania.
In sheer power, Hurricane Sandy ranks second among modern hurricanes, beating even Hurricane Katrina, according to Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami. Out in the Atlantic Ocean, Sandy was the most energetic tropical cyclone in history, thanks to its massive wind field. Once Sandy ramped up to a Category 1 hurricane and slammed into New Jersey, the storm's integrated kinetic energy was second only to Hurricane Isabel in 2003, McNoldy wrote in a blog post. "It stood out to me that this was a pretty unique case of a rather weak storm as wind speeds go, but huge on the impact scale," McNoldy told OurAmazingPlanet. Integrated kinetic energy (IKE) is a new scale designed to better convey the destructive power from both a hurricane's wind and storm surge. It's a measure of the wind speed integrated over how wide an area the winds are blowing. The U.S. government patented IKE in 2007. The Saffir-Simpson Scale, used by the National Weather Service, only reports top wind speeds.
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