Quote Form a Highly Respected Weather Forecaster

The following is a fantastic discussion from a weather forecast I hold in high regard.    His name is Roger Smith. 

"Reality check says Euro track probably most likely to verify, but intensity could be overdone. This would still mean a potential high impact storm on Monday and Tuesday in the New York City region including much of NJ, Long Island and New England, and possible snow problems at higher elevations to the southwest, so by no means should we say that being spared on the intensity will mean no big deal, this would be a big deal on the Euro track at 965 mbs so there is a 30-mb spectrum at least between the evident catastrophic damage from the depicted system and the considerable damage or at least disruption from a 965 mb storm at landfall.

It's a tough situation when you have one model saying winds SE 100-150 mph, storm surge 20-40 ft, possible 8-16 inches of rain, and another one saying winds NE 20-40 mph, no storm surge, possible half inch of rain mixed with sleet. How do you blend those and get a consensus for your five-day outlook?

I guess the NYC mets will be warning their viewers and clients that a major, potentially destructive storm warning could be declared at any time within 24-48 hours, or could be waved off and an all clear sounded. We should echo this on the forum and simply say it's not possible to choose between the two options yet, what we are looking at is (in layman's terms) whether or not Sandy threads a needle and gets past a block in its path -- if it does, then the conditions may be ideal for it to max out and reach the intensity of a major hurricane. It may even still be a major hurricane (but if not, same difference, larger wind field). But at the same time, it could be weakened by this process and could arrive as a much weaker system, or, it could be blocked out and forced to turn right and head east, looking for some other weakness in the block and perhaps becoming a problem days later somewhere well to the east.

That's my suggestion, to say basically there's maybe a one in three chance of a weather disaster, one in three chance of a weather "event" that is not a disaster, and one in three that nothing much will happen, it will get colder and perhaps rain or sleet a bit.

My feeling is that we will have model consensus by 12z Friday but this gives perhaps 48h for effective evacuations over a busy weekend when many people will perhaps be distracted by politics, football, Halloween, month end concerns, etc etc. If the Euro were exactly right, anyone who could leave Long Island or the coastal parts of NJ, se NY and CT-RI should plan to do so and move valuables away from harm's way. With the reputation of the Euro, if I lived there, I would probably get ready to do that but wait a day or two and see what happened on the models. If this was just one other model, it would be less ominous. But the Euro? I am not aware of the Euro as being a major over-developer like the GGEM sometimes does, but in this case, you have 20-30 mbs of slack before a model error even becomes significant to the result. This would be just about as scary at 953 mbs as it is at 933 mbs."