Harford County Monitoring Hurricane Sandy

Harford County officials are closely monitoring the trajectory of Hurricane Sandy, which was churning in the Caribbean Thursday morning and could impact the mid-Atlantic region early next week.

The storm—currently a hurricane after strengthening Wednesday—may make landfall in Florida Friday, forecasts said. The same forecasts indicated the storm is tracking to strike between the mid-Atlantic and New England Monday or Tuesday.

Harford County hasn't felt the tropical storm season in 2012 as much as it did in 2011, but officials countywide are preparing for the first big storm of the season.

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Harford County Emergency Operations officials are set to join a weather service conference call Thursday afternoon along with other state and local agencies to get the latest weather information and formulate a plan.

"We are definitely gearing up," Linda Ploener, manager of emergency planning, said Thursday morning.

She explained that the county emergency operations center has already laid some groundwork behind the scenes in preparation for the storm.

"We’ll have a pretty good feel for how our plan of attack is going to go by tomorrow," Ploener said.

Havre de Grace Mayor Wayne Dougherty told Patch Thursday morning that his staff will be giving him a briefing on the city's preparations Friday morning.

Baltimore Gas and Electric is also monitoring Sandy's progress and preparing in to handle any power outages the storm may cause.

Huricane Irene threatened the mid-Atlantic region in August of last year, before Tropical Storm Lee dumped heavy rain in the northeast, sending the Susquehanna River to near-record crests as the storm runoff headed downstream toward Havre de Grace.

Havre de Grace was left with a major cleanup and pricey dredging project. The Bay was injected with harmful sediment.

Port Deposit was hit the hardest during the Susquehanna River flooding.

This year, though, has been relatively quiet along the Upper Chesapeake Bay.

Tropical Storm Tony is also spinning in the Atlantic Thursday morning, but the storm is weakening and should not impact the United States.

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