Tagged: hurricane

It's still unclear whether Sandy will be a devastating storm or just a bad one.

It is clear, however, that Sandy will be remembered as the storm that broke all the rules and baffled the nation's top weather forecasters.

Early Saturday morning, the National Weather Service downgraded the storm from a hurricane to a tropical storm — only to return it to hurricane status a few hours later. Either way, forecasters warn, "widespread impacts" are expected along the coast.

Update at 3:46 p.m. ET. Sandy Makes Landfall:

At 3:20 p.m. ET., Sandy made landfall about five miles east of Kingston, Jamaica, the Hurricane Center said in an update.

Our Original Post Continues:

The tropical cyclone Sandy has just crossed the threshold to become a hurricane.

It's had top sustained winds above 170 miles per hour. It's got very low pressure. It is life threatening. And its cone of possible landfall includes Okinawa and the Asian mainland.

It's super typhoon Sanba, and it could strike the Japanese island by late Saturday night (local time) before storming on to China, South Korea and North Korea. Stars and Stripes writer Dave Ornauer says the storm's outermost bands are already hitting Okinawa:

The story of Hurricane Isaac will more than likely be one of flooding. The National Hurricane Center says that some places along the Mississippi and Louisiana coast could see up to 18 inches of rain.

Over five days, the tropical system will spread rain far and wide.

How widespread, you ask? Look at this map put together by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It shows their prediction of how much rain will fall in the next five days: