© Handout/Getty ImagesIn this satellite image provided Friday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Hurricane Sandy's huge cloud extent of up to 2,000 miles churns over the Bahamas, as a line of clouds associated with a powerful cold front approaches the East Coast of the U.S.
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.
Three days before reaching land - a time when the National Hurricane Center usually puts a bull's-eye on a small stretch of coast - government forecasters were still talking about the possibility of the storm striking anywhere from Maryland to New York.
Their uncertainty was especially surprising because hurricane track forecasts have become so good in the past couple of decades. They are usually accurate five or more days out.
Yet during a press conference on Friday, James Franklin of the NHC was still deflecting reporters' questions about Sandy's track. "We cannot be precise at this stage about exactly where it will come in," he said.
Forecasters say Sandy just isn't like other hurricanes.
"The whole thing is unprecedented," Henry Margusity of AccuWeather told NPR's Melissa Block. "
We've never seen anything like this."
Comment: Eleven deaths is a significant death toll for Cuba considering they have one of the world's best hurricane preparedness programs. Not including Hurricane Sandy, they've lost 35 people in hurricanes since 2001 despite consistently being in the the center of these storms. Perhaps they got caught by surprise. Time will tell if this foreshadows how the storm is received by many in the east coast. The storm is set to collide with an early winter storm coming from the west and an arctic blast coming from the north. So, make sure you all are prepared!