In reply to John Rushby:
I guess what Ben was getting at is that by calling it a 'superstorm' there is an implications that is its perhaps worse that a hurricane, needing a new category to label it
In fact, in terms of intensity, the winds were barely hurricane force and it was downgraded to a tropical storm when it made landfall. It was very big, and that Counts for a lot, google hurricane severity index, but even then it was not unprecedented in this regard either.
Compared to other cyclones such as hurricanes katrina, camille, Gilbert and Mitch, and a whole lot of pacific typhoons, it was either smaller or much less intense, or both.
It was unusual in hitting so far north, and Turning directly inland, and the sight of manhattan shut down like that is clearly newsworthy. It brought the worst storm surge in new York ever, and has caused loss of life and vast infrastructural damage.
Like i said, I think the label is almost as a result of weather pedantry, in that it was downgraded and so no longer officially a hurricane, but just calling it tropical storm sandy doesn't seem to do it justice. But then the networks pick up on it and as it is a catchy title it gets used widely and risks giving the impression that this was a whole new level of severity of storm, when it wasn't. Like i said upthread, google typhoon tip, *that* was a storm....
There has only once been a landfall of a cat 5 hurricane that was cat 5 at that point; even katrina was 'only' cat 3 when it hit new orleans. seeing what a sub-hurricane storm did to NY, the consequences of that are too horrendous to even contemplate,
Gregor