Long range predictability of Sandy-like storms

The predictability of hurricane Sandy from 2 weeks to 100 days is investigated using an ensemble of GFDL's ultra-high-resolution global climate models with horizontal resolution ranges from 3.5 km to 50 km. A large ensemble of dynamical long-range (14-100 days) predictions is used to access the probability of locating genesis and landfall locations of Sandy-like storms given the state of the atmosphere and the SST anomaly during summer-fall of 2012. In addition to the generic issue of predictability (or unpredictability) of landfall hurricanes for the above mentioned long range time scales, the main objective of this study is to determine if Sandy-like storms (with its unusual track and landfall location) are the inevitable outcome of the specific large-scale (i.e., climate) state of the atmosphere and ocean or is it simply a highly unpredictable “freak of nature” type storm.