How often does New York city experience a natural disaster?
Feb 07, 2010
in
Disaster
I wanna know because I might wanna move there when I get older, do they get as much hurricanes as Florida?
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5 comments
joe.finkle on February 7, 2010 at 4:38 am
When we get natural disasters, they are very minor. Every 10 years or so we get a tail end of a hurricane, but by the time they reach us they have been over land a long time or spent a while in cold water and they are pretty weak. Usually a tropical depression or less. We’re kind of tucked into a corner of the east coast. Hurricanes are more likely to hit the cape in Massachusetts than New York City, since it sticks out. (They have done some serious damage on Long Island, but that’s about a once in a hundred years scenario)
There is a fault line in the east river where we sometimes get very minor earthquakes. There have been 2 in my lifetime (I’m 27) and I slept through both. There was no damage at all. It’s a very minor fault line.
There was a tornado in Brooklyn once a couple of years ago. It was very minor. It took a couple of days to confirm that it was an actual tornado. That’s one of the worst natural disasters to hit the city in a while and it was pretty insignificant as tornados go. There was also a tornado not far north of the city. It happened, I kid you not, on the day I saw the movie Twister. I was then driving north with my parents and we had to pull off the road because it was too dark and rainy. My dad said it looked like tornado clouds and I told him to stop kidding around. The tornado formed later that night probably only a few miles away from where we were.
Our biggest natural disaster is nor’easters, which are large storms froming in the north atlantic and coming on shore. They can be snow or rain. They happen once every 2-3 years, sometimes twice in a year. They aren’t a big deal. You don’t even need to worry about your windows or anything. There’s sometimes minor damage, usually to scaffoldings. They usually don’t even cause the subway to shut down.
No major fires, landslides, floods, or ice storms either. We’re really in the best spot in the country as far as natural disasters are concerned. This year we barely even got any snow (we usually get a foot or two though).
There is a major natural disaster waiting to happen. There’s a major landslide in Europe that is expected to trigger a tsunami in New York when it falls, sometime in the next few thousand years. I’ll take my chances.
In New York, its only man-made disasters you have to worry about. We’ve had a couple of cranes collapse recently (they’re trying to figure out why that’s happened), a retaining wall fell over on the day they scheduled the meeting on how to repair it a few years back. That huge blackout affected us, along with the whole northeast, plus we had another serious blackout in queens that cost some lives. And of course, there was 9/11.
Compare that to the natural disasters you face everywhere else in the nation and I’ll take it.
Irockyouursocks on February 7, 2010 at 4:38 am
no they don’t.
hazel on February 7, 2010 at 4:38 am
no. We only had 1 "serious" hurricane warning, which was back in like 1990 something and it was only high winds.
The only thing about NY is the blizzards, it snows alot in the winter. Other than that NY is greatt!
cowgirl316 on January 3, 2011 at 1:51 pm
Adding to Joe.Finkle we just had the weirdest weather a few months ago.We had 2 tornados and a microburst.Joe is right there naturally disasters are rare for us we get flood warnings or watches but thats mainly for those down by the water or the hamptons.If anything snow and nor’easters are our only problems.By the time hurricanes get here we get the very end and its just a bad rainstorm.I mean talking years ago I was a baby they was a fire in the pine barrens heading out east think everyone heard about that.Otherwise you get lucky with weather I’m on the south shore and we’re more exposed bc we’re in the atlantic as opposed to the north shore which is the long island sound
Adolfo Bugayong on June 10, 2011 at 9:02 pm
http://youtu.be/joLNjERq1ag