On October 29th, 2012, Hurricane Sandy came ashore just northeast of Atlantic City, N.J., with a wind speed of approximately 80 mph. The storm had the worst possible trifecta of characteristics: an extremely large diameter, strong winds and high tide at landfall, which generated massive storm surge that inundated the coast from New Jersey to Connecticut.
Record surge levels were recorded in several areas of New York and New Jersey, with over 12 feet of surge in some locations. Subway tunnels flooded, airport runways flooded, power outages occurred all along the coast, natural gas lines were broken, and when it was all over, at least 650,000 homes were damaged or destroyed from the storm. On top of the estimated 72 people in the U.S. who were killed as a direct result of the storm, many more lives were lost as a result of hypothermia, house fires, vehicle accidents and other indirect causes.
This National Geographic documentary chronicles the events leading up to and immediately after Superstorm Sandy slammed into the Atlantic Seaboard.
Storm Surge 