Heavy snow, rain, and flooding for the Northeast U.S.
The winter of 2009-2010 continues its relentless onslaught over the U.S. today, as a powerful low pressure system intensifying along the East Coast brings heavy snow, flooding rains, and high winds to New England and the Mid-Atlantic. The storm has already dropped more than two feet of snow over Eastern New York near Albany, and surrounding regions of Western Massachusetts and Southern Vermont. These regions are now seeing rain mixed in with the snow, which will limit further accumulations to 1 - 3 inches. Farther east, flooding is a concern for most of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, southern New Hampshire, and portions of western Maine, where heavy rainfall of 1 - 3 inches on top of a snow pack with a high water content has created runoff that has already swollen many rivers to flood stage. Heavy snow is the main concern over southeast New York, northern New Jersey, and northeast Pennsylvania. The unusually slow-moving storm is expected to drop snow amounts of up to 18" in the Pocono Mountains of northeast Pennsylvania, and in northern New Jersey. New York City, whose 30.5" of snow so far this winter is 13" above average for this date, could get up to a foot of wet, heavy snow. Philadelphia's 73" of snow for the season will get an 8 - 12" boost from the storm, taking their record snowiest winter even further into record territory. Wind gusts of 30 - 40 mph in combination with the very wet, heavy snow will make power outages a problem over much of the region.
Figure 1. Visible satellite image at 9:30am EST Thursday, February 25, 2010 showing today's Northeast U.S. snowstorm. Image credit: NASA GSFC GOES project.
Some selected storm-total snowfall amounts, from Tuesday morning through 10am EST today, courtesy of the National Weather Service:
...CONNECTICUT...
BURLINGTON 10.0
NEW HARTFORD 3.8 W 9.0
...KENTUCKY...
OVEN FORK 1 NE 5.0
BLEDSOE 2 SE 4.0
...MASSACHUSETTS...
SAVOY 28.5
ROWE 25.0
CHESTERFIELD 24.0
ASHFIELD 23.6
HEATH 22.0
SHELBURNE 22.0
PLAINFIELD 21.5
PITTSFIELD 20.0
BECKET 19.8
CHESTER 19.5
BLANDFORD 19.0
ASHBURNHAM 16.8
LANESBOROUGH 16.0
NORTH OTIS 16.0
NEW ASHFORD 13.0
WORCESTER 10.7
...NEW HAMPSHIRE...
EAST LEMPSTER 20.0
WASHINGTON 18.5
PETERBOROUGH 18.0
RANDOLF 17.6
GREENFIELD 16.0
NEWPORT 15.3
WILTON 14.0
BENNINGTON 13.0
WAPOLE 12.9
WEST CHESTERFIELD 10.8
LEMPSTER 10.0
...NEW YORK...
ALTAMONT 26.5
WESTERLO 26.0
WILLARD MTN BASE 25.0
NORTH HEBRON 24.0
MEDUSA 23.0
MORIAH 22.5
TABORTON 22.0
DURHAM 20.0
PORTER CORNERS 20.0
ROXBURY 18.9
PHOENICIA 18.5
CHATHAM CENTER 18.0
SCHENECTADY 15.0
ALBANY 12.4
BINGHAMTON 10.5
...OHIO...
CARROLOTON 5.5
...PENNSYLVANIA...
PONOCO PEAK LAKE 13.0
HAWLEY 3.8 NE 11.0
WANTAGE 11.0
PLEASANT MOUNT 10.0
DINGMANS FERRY 3.9 WSW 9.2
MILANVILLE 1.5 SE 8.9
SAYLORSBURG 8.5
BEEMERVILLE 8.0
EAST STROUDSBURG 8.0
THOMPSON 8.0
...RHODE ISLAND...
BURRILLVILLE 6.5
WEST GLOCESTER 5.1
WOONSOCKET 0.3 W 3.4
...TENNESSEE...
APPALACHIA 3.0
ROAN MOUNTAIN 3.0
Update on this Saturday's major winter storm in Europe
Computer forecast models continue to forecast the development of a powerful winter storm that will rapidly intensify Saturday morning into a meteorological "bomb" that will bring high winds and flooding rains to Portugal, northern Spain, and possibly France. However, today's model runs are less aggressive in deepening the storm, and no longer call for the storm to be as intense as last year's Winter Storm Klaus. Klaus, which hit northern Spain and southwest France January 23 - 25, was Earth's most costly natural disaster of 2009, causing $5.1 billion in damage and killing 26. Klaus peaked in intensity at 967 mb, and brought wind gusts of 120 mph (193 km/hr) to Formiguères, France, 125 mph (200 km/hr) to Portbou, Spain, and 134 mph (216 km/hr) to Port d'Envalira, Andorra. Last night's 00Z (7pm EST) run of the ECMWF model and GFS model called for Saturday's storm to have 974 - 976 mb central pressure. Saturday's storm still has the potential to be plenty damaging, as winds of tropical storm force with gusts to hurricane force should affect a large swath of Portugal and northern Spain.
Figure 2. Forecast from the 1am EST 2/25/10 run of the GFS model for 18 GMT Saturday for surface winds. The GFS is predicting that Saturday's storm will peak in intensity at this time with a pressure of 974 mb. Sustained winds just below hurricane force of 60 - 75 mph (green colors) are expected offshore from Portugal. Image was generated using our wundermap for Spain with the "model" layer turned on.
Next post
My next post will be Friday.
Jeff Masters
this frozen drop was suspended on the thinnest filament of ice over our frozen brook..so very delicate and beautiful
Reader Comments
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A hurricane can cross hemispheres without becoming nothing and then becoming something again. A storm will not suddenly start rotating clockwise if it crosses the equator into the southern hemisphere. It would keep spinning counter-clockwise until the force of the coriolis effect overpowers the storm's intertia. By this token, if a hurricane were to cross into the opposite hemisphere, it would likely weaken as its circulation is disrupted.
This is like winding up a swing and letting it loose to spin like crazy, but once it fully unwinds and starts going the other direction, it starts slowing down as it encounters resistance from the opposite direction. Eventually the swing stops and begins to rotate the other way.
Hey there, I am great, yourself?
yeah this winter has been snowy :p
Just to understand this.
If it is extra hot one year its not global warming
If it is extra cold one year its not global warming
Aral gone awry
The Aral Sea, located in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in central Asia. Left: 2000. Middle: 2004. Right: 2009. Once one of the largest inland bodies of salty reservoirs in the world and the second largest sea in Asia, the Aral Sea has shrunk dramatically over the last 30 years. One of the main reasons why is crop irrigation: water has been drawn off by upstream feeder streams. As the sea diminishes, noticeable changes in climate conditions and increasing sandstorms are affecting the area.
Credit: Images taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. Courtesy of NASA.
http://climate.nasa.gov/stateOfFlux/index.cfm
What a low-brow comment in a blog mostly occupied by Americans that spend at least some portion of their day staring at weather maps...
(not you, KOTG)
Yes, but off the coast of Peru there are many warm anomalies. The ENSO warm pool is now actually smaller and less intense than the one west of Chile, which is now draining into Pine Island Bay in Antarctica, a major future tipping point for West Antarctica at which the first tipping point has already been passed. How do we know that this is a spike, and that the global temperatures won't just keep accelerating upward, since the solar maximum will arrive in two years after all?
yeah no doubt
Lol...but unlike what you said, it doesn't need to get downgraded to a blob first before crossing. No invisible barrier is going to stop a hurricane from crossing the equator without being a weak disturbance, and it takes time for the storm to start rotating the other way, if it survives the transition.
It sure would be fun to see :)
well that's a plus
I just figured if a low crossed the equator it would automatically become a high. ;)
Vamei came very close to the equator in 2001, but did not cross it. However the pattern I described is far more likely than an equator crossing and a sudden acceleration over 40,000 km in a single day.
You're a good neighbor. I'm glad everyone's alright. I know what you mean about looking like something from a horror movie. There does seem to be an element of, unreality? I'm sure I just made up that word, but you know what I mean. I remember after Rita, walking up the oak tree on yet another salvage mission, telling my dad, I see this on TV all the time, I just never thought it would be me.
Thanks to the evacuation there weren't any deaths or injuries due to the trees. Around here anyway. That was not the case unfortunately on her outter wind field. :(
If I've learned anything from that it's that trees are heavy! After cutting the root ball and the branches off that giant it still broke that thick chain and nearly toppled the crane, sinking its stablizer feet 3 feet into the ground. How it was finally removed I didn't see. One day the Army corp of engineers came and when I went back it was like nothing was ever there. After all the drama, I think the pressure got to us and the gallows humor came out. We had a saying, Rita didn't blow the houses away. The trees held them down. Lol. I know I'm going to he-double toothpicks for that. :)
05:55 AM Feb 26, 2010
SINGAPORE - This month could turn out to be the driest February ever recorded in Singapore, if current conditions continue.
The National Environment Agency said only 5.3 mm of rainfall has been recorded so far, compared to 18.7 mm in the same period last year.
February is traditionally one of the driest months in the year. And this year, the El Nino effect is making it worst.
A historical comparison: 1968 and 2005 have had the driest Februaries so far, when 8.4 mm of rain fell in each instance.
The Public Utilities Board said the dry spell is also causing record water consumption. Some 590 Olympic-sized pools of water are being consumed daily on average, or about 7 per cent more than last February.
The national water agency is advising households to practise good water-saving habits, such as taking shorter showers.
The dry spell has also seen an increase in the outbreak of grass, lalang and vegetation fires.
The Singapore Civil Defence Force said it has responded to 92 cases so far this month alone, and is appealing to the public to help minimise such fires.
http://www.todayonline.com/Singapore/EDC100226-0000070/Could-this-be-the-driest-February-on-record
Lol, well if it did that the satellite images would show a hurricane one second and then clear skies the next :P
The only thing that changes is the force of the coriolis effect that exerts influence on air motion. The hurricane would still be an area of low pressure, but the air rushing towards the center would have a force trying to curve it to the left, instead of the right like in the northern hemisphere. This force would require a bit of time to overcome the inertia of the hurricane which would already be spinning counterclockwise quite fast.
Lol dude, for real, its obvious he wasnt serious :p and I thought Canadians enjoyed humor
I guess that's what we will find out during the next few decades. I'm betting the earth's temperature will cool at least 1 degree Celsius over the next 30 years due to the cold PDO and the following cold AMO, just as it did in the 1940s through the 1970s. The earth's average temperature has neither increased nor decreased since the 1998 El Nino, which fits in with the PDO which is in the middle of changing-over from warm to cold.
decade GTA AE residual
1880s -0.28 -0.28 +0.00
1890s -0.25 -0.23 -0.02
1900s -0.26 -0.20 -0.05
1910s -0.28 -0.17 -0.10
1920s -0.18 -0.13 -0.04
1930s -0.04 -0.09 +0.05
1940s +0.03 -0.05 +0.08
1950s -0.02 -0.03 +0.01
1960s -0.01 -0.00 -0.01
1970s -0.00 +0.07 -0.07
1980s +0.18 +0.18 -0.01
1990s +0.31 +0.33 -0.02
2000s +0.51 +0.47 +0.04
2010s xx.xx +0.64
The lower figure is the ECMWF analysis which uses all available observations, including satellite and weather balloon records, synthesised in a physically- and meteorologically-consistent way, and the upper figure represents the same period from our HadCRUT record. The ECMWF analysis shows that in data-sparse regions such as Russia, Africa and Canada, warming over land is more extreme than in regions sampled by HadCRUT. If we take this into account, the last decade shows a global-mean trend of 0.1 C to 0.2 C per decade. We therefore infer with high confidence that the HadCRUT record is at the lower end of likely warming.
http://climateprogress.org/2010/02/25/met-office-re-examine-of-climate-data-temperature-record/
Guess what, I know where you got that, and it was from a random person who computed those numbers based on CO2 concentrations that he used to predict the temperature for each decade. You cannot use only CO2 to compute the temperature. I'm sorry but that is un-reliable data, and from a random guy commenting on a blog no less. Don't cite that stuff.
Your comment there is no warming since 1998 applies too:
I'm sorry but that is un-reliable data, and from a random guy commenting on a blog no-less.
Levi if you insist i can post other data.
What are you talking about. I'm basing that statement off of this official graph that everyone uses.
If you look at the graph between 2002 and now, ignoring this year's January spike, the temperature trend has clearly flat-lined. There will be warming this year because of the El Nino.
Don't try to turn this around on me, your data was unreliable and computed by an amateur who doesn't know what he's doing.
Levi, I know the urge to show others that he believes a little too strongly. We know, you don't have to bother.
More fires and drought in the Indopacific region means more CO2 and methane release into the atmosphere from rainforests and peat bogs. The same is true for the Amazon, which could collapse with a 2C rise in global temperatures.
You can't just factor anthropogenic influences and solar activity out of the equation, as those two will cause the warming to accelerate and natural causes already lost the battle for forcings in the 1970's. Also the increase from the 1980's to 2000's was greater than the decrease from the 1940's to 70's. (graph only goes to late 1990's and excludes natural oceanic and atmospheric oscillations)
I just don't want them showing me un-reliable and flawed data after lecturing everyone else about using faulty data.
Ignoring doesn't count levi and you should know that climate is observation over more than just 12 years.
I posted the link and now again with the full comment.
I used GISTEMP together with CO2 concentrations from Law Dome and the Keeling curve to construct a global temperature predictor, decade by decade, using the previous decade’s CO2 to compute the average temperature for the following decade. In the following, GTA is the decadal average GISTEMP anomaly, AE is the Arrhenius formula Estimated anomaly and the resdiuals are the differences.
decade GTA AE residual
1880s -0.28 -0.28 +0.00
1890s -0.25 -0.23 -0.02
1900s -0.26 -0.20 -0.05
1910s -0.28 -0.17 -0.10
1920s -0.18 -0.13 -0.04
1930s -0.04 -0.09 +0.05
1940s +0.03 -0.05 +0.08
1950s -0.02 -0.03 +0.01
1960s -0.01 -0.00 -0.01
1970s -0.00 +0.07 -0.07
1980s +0.18 +0.18 -0.01
1990s +0.31 +0.33 -0.02
2000s +0.51 +0.47 +0.04
2010s xx.xx +0.64
Note the prediction of great warmth in the decade just now starting.
http://climateprogress.org/2010/02/25/met-office-re-examine-of-climate-data-temperature-record/#com ments
Is that before or after the more water vapor that you guys have been trying hard to attribute all of the snowfall to?
As everyone knows, extra humidity doesn't work out too well for either fires or drought...so it cannot be simultaneous.
Accurate global temperature readings did not become available until 1979 when the satellite era began. Anything before that is based on a highly incomplete surface weather observation network that has grown but was very limited in the past.
Again, the next 20 years will likely prove something one way or the other.
The problem with your opinion is that it stands against the empirical data.
Well, for one thing, you post the same thing over and over again. Two, you are a parrot...no thoughts of your own, just what you have been told to say.
EDIT: Ohhhhh, "where is it flawed"...sorry. My bad, got used to the combative attitude.
I told you twice. It was computed by a random person on a blog that nobody knows, and all he did was predict temperature based on CO2 concentrations, which is ridiculous, since CO2 is not the only factor determining temperature. That makes the data unreliable, it is not from an official source that knows what they're doing.
And as for the rest of the data out there a lot of it is manipulated and put together from scanty data since reliable global observations have only been around for 30 years. Don't forget about the IPCC scam.
One way or the other? So you actualy are willing to take the risc of runaway climate change?
You mean empirical like the fact that this January was the warmest for the world as a whole since 1998 and yet the entire world is like what the heck because the major energy centers of the earth, eastern USA, Europe, and the far east, were all far colder than normal?? That's empirical for you.
Actualy i have missed something but i did not read about manipulated data.
HadCru is actualy with a cool bias, same as the US temperature readings. Looks like you missed some of Dr Masters blog posts.
I don't claim to know everything that effects the world climate. I have an opinion, and I stand by it, but that doesn't mean I know everything about how the world works. There are likely many processes and cycles we haven't even discovered yet that effect world climate patterns, so obviously we can't know for sure what will happen in 20 years. My opinion is that the natural drivers we already know about will cool the earth slightly over the next 20-30 years. We will see what happens. The problem with GW alarmists is their amazing appetite for using unreliable data and a lack of common sense. Anything at all that happens, be it snow or strong hurricanes, is blamed on GW.
So now GISSTEMP is manipulated? Why don't you make the math if you are so brilliant in drawing your conclusion in seconds.
Your opinion is fine as long you don't pretend to know it better than the FACTS. And thats exactly what you doing here through the day.
as much as I hate to say this,
you might as well not argue with him, you wont change his opinion. :p
check e-mail and reply fast.
Excuse the sarcasm but….
To date, there has not been a single credible journal article that shows a natural cause for the modern day warming while also showing how record high greenhouse gas concentrations are not significant.
NOT ONE.
Do you really believe that the scientists at CRU were able to squelch every scientist on the planet who tried to publish this landmark anti-AGW paper? Is there no sense of the low probability and the large scale of this conspiracy for this to be true?
If one throws out the HadCRU data and all papers by these folks, there is still a mountain of evidence for AGW.
Do the rapidly melting ice sheets and glaciers have access to these emails and joined in on the conspiracy?
Do the various climate models that show GHGs as the dominant forcing mechanism have access to these emails and joined in on the conspiracy?
Do the GISS, UAH, RSS data that show global warming of approximately 0.2C per decade over the past 30 years have access to these emails and joined in on the conspiracy? Certainly Spencer and Christy who run UAH and are well-known skeptics of AGW would not align themselves with AGW and yet their satellite-derived measurements track reasonably with GISS, RSS, and HadCRU. (BTW, 2009 was the second warmest year since 1850 even though it was the “weakest sun” in 100 years!)
Does the ocean read these emails and magically increase its heat content?
Does the cooling stratosphere (even accounting for ozone loss) read the emails and join in on the hoax?
Do the plants and animals read these emails and decide to die off and/or change their migratory habits so that they can support the conspiracy?
I could go on ad infinitum.
For quite a long time, we have known that a doubling of CO2 will warm the climate at least 1C and there is fairly good certainty that the resulting feedbacks will produce at least 2C additional warming with 3C more likely. We are also measuring CO2 increases of 2 ppm and climbing and we have levels that have not been seen in the past 15 million years.
Are we to conclude that these emails deny all of this evidence?
There are many scientists from many fields that have published data that show the effects of global warming and why humans are the primary drivers of this warming. These scientists include some of the obvious: climatologists, meteorologists, geologists, modelers, and oceanographers. Some less obvious include: biologists, marine biologists, zoologists, chemists, astrophysicists, economists, environmental politics reasearchers, and others. I am quite confident that MANY of these folks have NEVER spoken to the CRU folks nor emailed them.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/02/close-encounters-of-the-absurd-kind/comment-p age-3/#comments
Facts that you believe just because a random guy created and posted them.
The only true facts about world temperature data are from 1979 onward and that's IT.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I'm done for now this is getting too crazy lol.
i have a couple of bags of nuts i would gladly part with!
lol
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