2012 Atlantic Hurricane Season: Non-Minnesotans arguing about the weather...

[joecct]

Re: 2012 Atlantic Hurricane Season: Non-Minnesotans arguing about the weather...

Ouch. I was thinking more of Fredonia, though.

It's starting to look like my escape route isn't west, but rather north. Guess I need to have the passport in hand just in case.

Last I saw the track in NYS is Bingo -> 'Cuse -> Watertown -> Montreal

[SteveP]

Re: 2012 Atlantic Hurricane Season: Non-Minnesotans arguing about the weather...

I'm jealous of the "Hurricane Snow"

Not exactly champagne powder.

[RaceBoarder]

Re: 2012 Atlantic Hurricane Season: Non-Minnesotans arguing about the weather...

Bring it on!

Looks like the heavy snow will be in WVa so we should be good.

I'm jealous of the "Hurricane Snow"

[SteveP]

Re: 2012 Atlantic Hurricane Season: Non-Minnesotans arguing about the weather...

Last track I saw has it going right through the State College area on Wednesday or so.

Bring it on!

Looks like the heavy snow will be in WVa so we should be good.

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: 2012 Atlantic Hurricane Season: Non-Minnesotans arguing about the weather...

Last track I saw has it going right through the State College area on Wednesday or so.

Ouch. I was thinking more of Fredonia, though.

It's starting to look like my escape route isn't west, but rather north. Guess I need to have the passport in hand just in case.

[joecct]

Re: 2012 Atlantic Hurricane Season: Non-Minnesotans arguing about the weather...

I'll be shocked if you get anything beyond a little rain out there.

Last track I saw has it going right through the State College area on Wednesday or so.

[FreshFish]

Re: 2012 Atlantic Hurricane Season: Non-Minnesotans arguing about the weather...

too weird.

watching weather channel, they have a reporter from a town in RI. He comes on air, live, broadcasting from a particular state beach, talking about how seawall is 3 ft tall and they are expecting 8 foot storm surge. I know someone who lives right there. Call them to ask if they could see the bright lights from the filming. They didn't know, they had left the area to stay with friends.

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: 2012 Atlantic Hurricane Season: Non-Minnesotans arguing about the weather...

Fish
I can tell you that the weather company I won't name after working there for four years made sure that we hyped East Coast weather events, even if a more severe event was happening elsewhere.

I'm just glad I'm no longer in their employ.

We are supposed to bus to Fredonia NY on Tuesday for a game. Could be a dicey trip.

I'll be shocked if you get anything beyond a little rain out there.

[Patman]

Fish
I can tell you that the weather company I won't name after working there for four years made sure that we hyped East Coast weather events, even if a more severe event was happening elsewhere.

I'm just glad I'm no longer in their employ.

We are supposed to bus to Fredonia NY on Tuesday for a game. Could be a dicey trip.

Accuweather

[FreshFish]

Re: 2012 Atlantic Hurricane Season: Non-Minnesotans arguing about the weather...

FF: As with anything else these days the constant TV coverage and the availability of the internet has made everything inflated and taled about endlessly. Some of it of course is good-early warnings and instructions for people who woul dotherwise not have a clue what may happen. But the constant coverage is a bit of overkill. This storm is due to first begin to turn into the west at about 7-8AM tomorrow. Until then, all of this chatter on TV etc is just predictions based on what computers are spitting out. I wonder what this is all based on since in my lifetime i just do not recall too many stroms follwing this kind of path-chugging north and then suddenly turning left completely after moving this far up the coast.

I like the maps, it is interesting to correlate the things I see on the maps with the things I see out my window.

From around 10:30 this morning until about 1:30, the wind was out of the south, now it is much stronger from the north-northeast, and you can see low-lying clouds scudding past overhead even faster than the wind along the ground is traveling. Much chillier air, damper too. It's apparently part of one of those big circles that go out over the northern atlantic and come down again from Canada perhaps.

the advanced warning is helpful. for mass transit, gusting heavy winds can be problem, and flooding in low-lying areas where you depend upon electricity for power can become an almost guaranteed short-circuit in some areas, so you might as well manage things so that you don't have to rescue anyone, turn off the electricity in flood-prone areas before the floods come in, that kind of thing.

I feel bad for people who face mandatory evacuation though.


I guess around here people still remember the 1938 hurricane (they run stories about it in the local papers every time there's a bad storm brewing). It really created a lot of havoc and devastation in these parts, because they didn't have the early warning then and because it was a direct hit on Rhode Island (usually Long Island is the farthest east for a direct hit).

Excerpted from a much longer article that describes the effects along the eastern seaboard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_New_England_hurricane

The storm surge hit Westerly, Rhode Island at 3:50 pm EDT [Sept 21, 1938], resulting in 100 deaths there alone.[17]

The tide was even higher than usual because of the Autumnal Equinox and full moon. The hurricane produced storm tides of 14 to 18 feet (5 m) across most of the Long Island and Connecticut coast, with 18- to 25-foot (8 m) tides from New London east to Cape Cod. The storm surge was especially violent along the Rhode Island shore, sweeping hundreds of summer cottages out to sea. As the surge drove northward through Narragansett Bay, it was restricted by the Bay's funnel shape and rose to nearly 16 feet (15.8) feet above normal spring tides, resulting in more than 13 feet (4.0 m) of water in some areas of downtown Providence. Several motorists were drowned in their autos.[18] Due in part to the economic difficulties of the Great Depression many of the stores of downtown Providence were looted by mobs, often before the flood waters had fully subsided.

Many homes and structures along the coast were destroyed, as well as many structures inland along the hurricane's path. Entire beach communities on the coast of Rhode Island were obliterated. Napatree Point, a small cape that housed nearly 40 families between the Atlantic Ocean and Little Narragansett Bay just off of Watch Hill, Rhode Island, was completely swept away. Today, Napatree is a wildlife refuge with no human inhabitants. One house in Charlestown, Rhode Island was lifted and deposited across the street, where it stood, inhabited, until it was demolished in August 2011. Even to this day, concrete staircases and boardwalk bases, destroyed by the '38 hurricane can be found when sand levels on some beaches are low.

A few miles from Conanicut Island, keeper Walter Eberle lost his life when Whale Rock lighthouse was swept off its base and into the raging waves. His body was never found.

At least they learned something useful. None of those "hundreds of summer cottages swept out to sea" referenced above were rebuilt; in their place now are RI state beaches. they are very nice state beaches too, good fine sand (not the coarser, grittier stuff you get in Connecticut; the difference in weathering from facing waves direct from the Atlantic instead of waves that lap around Long Island first).


There are quite a few URI students along Narragansett Bay, the school and the town have a symbiotic relationship in that the school can enroll thousands more undergraduates than it can house because they all can find inexpensive offseason housing in weatherproofed summer cottages turned into year-round houses.

[SteveP]

Re: 2012 Atlantic Hurricane Season: Non-Minnesotans arguing about the weather...

I was just out turning the lawn furniture face down, bringing plastic chairs inside, etc. The wind has definitely picked up in intensity since this morning. I wonder whether I can feel the change in barometric pressure, something is definitely "in the air" so to speak.

I no longer have to decide whether to commute tomorrow, all train service is to be suspended as of 7 PM today. Laid in some extra bags of charcoal in case we lose power. During Irene we had to toss much of the stuff from the freezer, this time, if we lose power, we'll barbecue. Fortunately, water and natural gas are likely to continue uninterrupted, being underground, only internet and electricity are provided through a jury-rigged patchwork quilt of overhead wires lacing in between swaying tree limbs. Outages are inevitable given that configuration! we just hope they are localized this time instead of system-wide.

The storm isn't even supposed to arrive until late Monday yet I can hear the suppressed hysteria in the TV reporter's voice already....


Were people always this emotional about the weather on the east coast, or this a broader, 21st century phenomena? I've lived in many parts of the country, and everywhere else, the weather was part of the background, you adjusted as best you could and went about your business. We've only noticed all this restless breathless anticipatory conversation since we moved here in 2001.

Fish
I can tell you that the weather company I won't name after working there for four years made sure that we hyped East Coast weather events, even if a more severe event was happening elsewhere.

I'm just glad I'm no longer in their employ.

We are supposed to bus to Fredonia NY on Tuesday for a game. Could be a dicey trip.

[Ralph Baer]

Re: 2012 Atlantic Hurricane Season: Non-Minnesotans arguing about the weather...

FF: As with anything else these days the constant TV coverage and the availability of the internet has made everything inflated and taled about endlessly. Some of it of course is good-early warnings and instructions for people who woul dotherwise not have a clue what may happen. But the constant coverage is a bit of overkill. This storm is due to first begin to turn into the west at about 7-8AM tomorrow. Until then, all of this chatter on TV etc is just predictions based on what computers are spitting out. I wonder what this is all based on since in my lifetime i just do not recall too many stroms follwing this kind of path-chugging north and then suddenly turning left completely after moving this far up the coast.

It's all Obama's fault. (You can't blame Bush for moving to the left. )

[DrDemento]

Re: 2012 Atlantic Hurricane Season: Non-Minnesotans arguing about the weather...

FF: As with anything else these days the constant TV coverage and the availability of the internet has made everything inflated and taled about endlessly. Some of it of course is good-early warnings and instructions for people who woul dotherwise not have a clue what may happen. But the constant coverage is a bit of overkill. This storm is due to first begin to turn into the west at about 7-8AM tomorrow. Until then, all of this chatter on TV etc is just predictions based on what computers are spitting out. I wonder what this is all based on since in my lifetime i just do not recall too many stroms follwing this kind of path-chugging north and then suddenly turning left completely after moving this far up the coast.

[FreshFish]

Re: 2012 Atlantic Hurricane Season: Non-Minnesotans arguing about the weather...

I was just out turning the lawn furniture face down, bringing plastic chairs inside, etc. The wind has definitely picked up in intensity since this morning. I wonder whether I can feel the change in barometric pressure, something is definitely "in the air" so to speak.

I no longer have to decide whether to commute tomorrow, all train service is to be suspended as of 7 PM today. Laid in some extra bags of charcoal in case we lose power. During Irene we had to toss much of the stuff from the freezer, this time, if we lose power, we'll barbecue. Fortunately, water and natural gas are likely to continue uninterrupted, being underground, only internet and electricity are provided through a jury-rigged patchwork quilt of overhead wires lacing in between swaying tree limbs. Outages are inevitable given that configuration! we just hope they are localized this time instead of system-wide.

The storm isn't even supposed to arrive until late Monday yet I can hear the suppressed hysteria in the TV reporter's voice already....


Were people always this emotional about the weather on the east coast, or this a broader, 21st century phenomena? I've lived in many parts of the country, and everywhere else, the weather was part of the background, you adjusted as best you could and went about your business. We've only noticed all this restless breathless anticipatory conversation since we moved here in 2001.

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: 2012 Atlantic Hurricane Season: Non-Minnesotans arguing about the weather...

We had a downpour during Irene, but were still west of the damage. The Mohawk Valley got hit hard; hard enough they closed the Thruway for a few days.