Is this always true?
If so, whats the reason for this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane#Mechanics
I try to stay away from Wikipedia while at work or my productivity goes waaaaaaay down!
Hehe. I'll try to give an oversimplified explanation. In the northern hemisphere, large storms always circulate counterclockwise due to the Coriolis effect and the low pressure--air rising up pulls air in from the surrounding areas, and that happens while the Earth turns underneath it. You can see this just looking at satellite pictures, though this is cool too:
http://hint.fm/wind/Fair weather systems are associated with clockwise wind movements, for the record. See New Orleans on the map I linked there.
Now, in a North Atlantic hurricane, two factors make the northeastern part worse than the southwestern. First, energy is being drawn from warm tropical water, which is always to the south and east of the storm. The north and west of the storm is always over cooler water. Due to the circulation, the southeastern and northeastern parts have higher energy--and therefore more wind/rain/etc--and the northwestern and southwestern parts have lower energy.
Second, the most destructive portion of a hurricane is often not the rain and wind, but the storm surge. This is basically giant waves driven by wind, which pushes cubic kilometers of water onto shore. Of course, that only happens where the wind happens to be blowing toward the shore... which is of course also on the northeast side of the eye of the storm. So the northeastern side of the storm gets a double-whammy. The eyewall is nastiest for wind/rain/lightning, so the absolute worst place to be is just east or just northeast of the eyewall.
Besides the actual size and intensity of the storm, this is why Katrina destroyed NOLA so thoroughly. Katrina made landfall with the eastern eyewall just east of the city... which is exactly where the levees are.
In this case, NYC/NJ is getting hammered while, as noted, VA/DC are getting (relatively) spared. The northeastern eyewall hit land in Jersey.
In the southern hemisphere, of course, all of this is reversed.
