Oct. 25, 2012 - Sandy reaches its initial peak intensity as a Category 3 hurricane over Cuba. Hurricane Sandy pummeled the East Coast late in 2012's Atlantic hurricane season, causing 159 deaths and $70 billion in damages. Days before landfall, forecasts of its trajectory were still being made. Among the earliest to predict its true course was NASA's GEOS-5 global atmosphere model. The NASA model not only produced an accurate track of Sandy, but also captured fine-scale details of the storm's changing intensity and winds.