Sandy was only a category 1 when it hit NYC. This was a wakeup call and part of why there's been years of rebuilding and hardening of NY and NJ infrastructure afterward https://blogs.law.columbia.edu/climatechange/2012/11/21/what...

▲

Grazester 2 days ago | parent [-]

Yep.It this did much damage because places so far North East never experienced storm and so they never built with that in mind.

In place that experience this kind of weather more often(some parts of the Caribbean), it would have been business as usual the next day and I speak from experience.

▲

ChrisMarshallNY 2 days ago | parent [-]

Not so sure about that.

There’s been some nasty storms, up here. They just happen infrequently.

What made Sandy so bad, was timing. It hit at high tide, and mixed with another storm.

Also, geography. The Long Island Sound (the water between Long Island and Connecticut) can act as a “funnel,” that concentrates storm surges, if the wind is from the northeast, and there’s a number of waterways and estuaries, along the South Shore, that normally act as buffers, but actually turned into concentrators, with Sandy. Several seaside communities got all but wiped out, with boats being docked into the kid’s second-story bedroom.

Southmost Manhattan is mostly reclaimed land. That is naturally prone to flooding. It also has some of the most expensive real estate in the world, so any flooding is guaranteed to be pricey.

Because of the timing issue, I’m skeptical that anyone could predict how bad it got.

▲

Grazester 2 days ago | parent [-]

And I would argue that even if that was the case, if these areas saw more storms, then the likelihood of this occurring would not have been so one-off. They would have built with that consideration.

	▲	ChrisMarshallNY 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Possibly, but never underestimate the short-sightedness of real estate developers. In places like Florida, they force them to design storm-resistant housing (post-Andrew, mainly). Up here, after Sandy, any house south of Montauk Highway, is basically uninsurable. So you have a lot of waterfront property, that people can't sell. The insurance companies basically enforce it. My mother was big into managing stormwater runoff (in Maryland). It was one of her casus belli (She had more than one –She was pretty scrappy). Real estate developers hated her.