BULLETIN
POST-TROPICAL CYCLONE IRENE ADVISORY NUMBER 35
NWS NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL AL092011
1100 PM EDT SUN AUG 28 2011
…IRENE BECOMES POST-TROPICAL NEAR THE U.S./CANADIAN BORDER…
SUMMARY OF 1100 PM EDT…0300 UTC…INFORMATION
———————————————–
LOCATION…45.3N 71.3W
ABOUT 50 MI…80 KM N OF BERLIN NEW HAMPSHIRE
ABOUT 105 MI…165 KM S OF QUEBEC CITY QUEBEC
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS…50 MPH…85 KM/H
PRESENT MOVEMENT…NNE OR 25 DEGREES AT 26 MPH…43 KM/H
MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE…980 MB…28.94 INCHES
WATCHES AND WARNINGS
——————–
CHANGES IN WATCHES AND WARNINGS WITH THIS ADVISORY…
THE TROPICAL STORM WARNING FOR THE EAST COAST OF THE UNITED STATES
HAS BEEN DISCONTINUED.
SUMMARY OF WATCHES AND WARNINGS IN EFFECT…
A TROPICAL STORM WARNING IS IN EFFECT FOR…
* SOUTH COAST OF NEW BRUNSWICK FROM THE UNITED STATES/CANADA BORDER
NORTHEASTWARD TO FORT LAWRENCE INCLUDING GRAND MANAN
* SOUTH COAST OF NOVA SCOTIA FROM FORT LAWRENCE TO PORTERS LAKE
THE TROPICAL STORM WARNINGS IN EFFECT FOR CANADA WILL LIKELY BE
DISCONTINUED EARLY MONDAY.
GALE-FORCE WINDS ARE EXPECTED TO AFFECT COASTAL AREAS FROM EASTERN
LONG ISLAND TO MAINE THROUGH EARLY MONDAY.
FOR STORM INFORMATION SPECIFIC TO YOUR AREA IN THE UNITED
STATES…INCLUDING POSSIBLE INLAND WATCHES AND WARNINGS…PLEASE
MONITOR PRODUCTS ISSUED BY YOUR LOCAL NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE
FORECAST OFFICE. FOR STORM INFORMATION SPECIFIC TO YOUR AREA OUTSIDE
THE UNITED STATES…PLEASE MONITOR PRODUCTS ISSUED BY YOUR NATIONAL
METEOROLOGICAL SERVICE.
DISCUSSION AND 48-HOUR OUTLOOK
——————————
AT 1100 PM EDT…0300 UTC…THE CENTER OF POST-TROPICAL CYCLONE
IRENE WAS LOCATED NEAR LATITUDE 45.3 NORTH…LONGITUDE 71.3 WEST.
IRENE IS MOVING TOWARD THE NORTH-NORTHEAST NEAR 26 MPH…43 KM/H.
A TURN TOWARD THE NORTHEAST AND EAST-NORTHEAST WITH AN INCREASE IN
FORWARD SPEED IS EXPECTED OVER THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS. ON THIS
TRACK…THE CENTER OF IRENE WILL MOVE OVER EASTERN CANADA TONIGHT
AND ON MONDAY.
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS ARE NEAR 50 MPH…85 KM/H…WITH HIGHER
GUSTS…MAINLY OVER OR NEAR THE WATER WELL TO THE SOUTH AND EAST OF
THE CENTER. LITTLE CHANGE IN STRENGTH IS FORECAST DURING THE NEXT
48 HOURS.
GALE-FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 365 MILES…585 KM FROM THE
CENTER.
ESTIMATED MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE IS 980 MB…28.94 INCHES.
HAZARDS AFFECTING LAND
———————-
STORM SURGE…ELEVATED WATER LEVELS ALONG THE COAST OF NEW ENGLAND
WILL SUBSIDE OVERNIGHT AND ON MONDAY. USERS ARE URGED TO CONSULT
PRODUCTS ISSUED BY THEIR LOCAL NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE OFFICES FOR
LOCATION-SPECIFIC STORM TIDE AND SURGE INFORMATION.
RAINFALL…HEAVY RAINS ARE DIMINISHING OVER NORTHERN NEW ENGLAND.
ANY ADDITIONAL ACCUMULATIONS SHOULD AMOUNT TO LESS THAN ONE INCH.
WIND…WINDS OF TROPICAL STORM FORCE…ESPECIALLY IN GUSTS…COULD
STILL OCCUR ACROSS PORTIONS OF EASTERN NEW ENGLAND…NEW
BRUNSWICK…AND NOVA SCOTIA OVERNIGHT. SIGNIFICANTLY HIGHER WIND
SPEEDS ARE LIKELY OVER AREAS OF ELEVATED TERRAIN IN NORTHERN NEW
ENGLAND AND EASTERN CANADA.
NEXT ADVISORY
————-
THIS IS THE LAST PUBLIC ADVISORY ISSUED BY THE NATIONAL HURRICANE
CENTER ON THIS SYSTEM. FUTURE INFORMATION ON THIS SYSTEM…
INCLUDING TOTAL RAINFALL ACCUMULATIONS FROM IRENE…CAN BE FOUND IN
PUBLIC ADVISORIES ISSUED BY THE HYDROMETEOROLOGICAL PREDICTION
CENTER…UNDER AWIPS HEADER TCPAT4 AND WMO HEADER WTNT34 KWNH…
BEGINNING AT 5 AM EDT.
================================================================
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Is it simply my lack of perspective (I’ve lived most of my sixty-mumble years in the mid-Atlantic states between New York the Damned and Mordor-on-the-Potomac), but was this whole “Run For Your Lives/We’re All Gonna Die!” cattywumpus over Hurricane Irene exceptionally hysterical for the size and force of the storm, or what?
I got the consistent impression that the hairspray-heads of the yammering media were filling essentially dead air in a slow news interval while our political parasite class were striving to project the illusion of utility to justify their predation upon the shrinking productive sector of our population.
I’d be interested in some meteorological perspective to help put this storm – and the past several days’ hooraw – into some kind of context.
As things stand, I’m inclined to scoff.
Goodnight,Irene….
I don’t understand how they convert mph to km/h.
1 mile is exactly 1.609344 km
So 50 mph is 80 km/h to the nearest km/h (not 85)
and 26 mph is 42 km/h to the nearest km/h (not 43)
IRENE BECOMES POST-TROPICAL but will the public become post-traumatic! LOL.
29 Aug: Sydney Morning Herald: Erik Jensen: Mental illness rise linked to climate
It shows that one in 10 primary school children reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in the wake of cyclone Larry in 2006. More than one in 10 reported symptoms more than three months after the cyclone.
”There’s really clear evidence around severe weather events,” the executive director of the Brain and Mind Research Institute, Professor Ian Hickie, said…
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/mental-illness-rise-linked-to-climate-20110828-1jger.html
29 Aug: ABC Australia: Peter Ryan: Climate change linked to mental health problems
Professor Ian Hickie of the Brain & Mind Institute, who will launch the report in Sydney today, says regional and remote communities are most vulnerable to the impact of climate change.
“I think what we are seeing now is a much more significant counting of not just the short-term costs and reactions but the longer-term costs, the loss of community cohesion and that being essential to people’s long-term mental health,” Professor Hickie told ABC Radio’s AM.
“The drought was a particularly instructive event for everyone in Australia and we saw a lot of focus for the first time on the mental health effects, particularly suicides in rural families, the effect on rural communities of prolonged examples of weather change.”
Climate Institute chief executive John Connor said in addition to the $9 billion economic cost of rebuilding, a deeper cost to human health and the social fabric is emerging.
“With Australian regions increasingly exposed to extreme weather, recognising and managing the risks of climate change is essential. It’s an insurance policy to protect our communities,” he said…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-08-29/climate-change-linked-to-mental-health-problems/2860150
Tucci78: I think you have it exactly right. This was totally blown (pun somewhat intended) out of proportion. The “biggest storm to hit the area in 50 years” talk was never justified, unless it was put into the context that there hasn’t really been a very big storm in the area in 50 years. The talk about a 30 foot storm surge was total nonsense, and talking about what might happen if there was a 30 foot storm surge was no more justified than talking about what might happen in an alien attack.
At 9:09 PM on 28 August, tom T writes:
Still and all, I had my hopes that Irene would descend upon Martha’s Vineyard with all the wrath of Allah vengeful upon apostates, leaving our TelePrompTer-in-Chief treading water in the cold Atlantic as local private citizens troll slowly past in their small craft, each of them throwing him an anchor….
This is the 10th billion dollar + costly weather event for 2011 breaking the record. Maybe the locusts are next? Joining the grain, rice & Japanese beetles. It’s also hard on the financially challenged small businesses. Up to 40% could go out. It’s a serious deal we need to recognize that fact.
Hoopla fizzles in Quebec. I predicted New Brunswick a cupla days ago.
H/T, Tucci78. You’re spot on.
And hopefully the last post on WUWT about it as well !
Hindsight, by it’s use all the worlds wars could have been prevented, it’s disasters averted, it’s problems solved. Truly it’s that simple?
As usual, http://xkcd.com/944/ sums it up.
(be sure to mouse-over)
I am still having trouble believing the categories issued by NOAA during the storm from the beginning until the end. There were times I could see every weather station from miles around the eye and could only see sustained winds of 50 mph or less while NOAA was claiming the storm was a hurricane with 85 mph sustained winds. I have seen no explanation for that anyplace other than some hand-waving about 33 feet off the ground or look to the east of the storm.
Do the planes fly at 33 feet? Is NOAA using indirect methods? Does Hansen run NOAA? What is up with 30 mph speed differences almost the whole life of the storm? Perhaps they are using a new method developed at Penn State?
The NY Times has a story on why things went a bit sideways with the forecasts for Irene. While I can sympathise with some of those involved in this understandable error, I have a few questions about why the NHC continued to report such high wind speeds when it was clear that nothing anywhere near their numbers was actually occurring on the ground. Reading the story, one sees many reasonable reasons for Irene’s strange behaviour, but nowhere do they explain why there was such a huge discrepancy in reported vs actual wind speeds. NHC was reporting >100 mph sustained winds all over the place. Somebody has some splainin’ to do.
While the winds weren’t as bad as predicted the storm has been bad in NJ. Worst flooding since at least Gloria, still a state of emergency, basically you can’t get anywhere. About 500,000 homes without power which won’t be restored for many until the weekend. I hate to think what a Cat 2 at landfall on the NJ shore would be like!
Irene was a big F-A-I-L for me in New Hampshire. Some flooding and scattered power outages in our area, but nothing major. To say it was over-hyped is the understatement of the year.
My wife and I went up to Plymouth NH to see the Pemigewasset River, swollen in part due to a dam failure (or overflow, not sure which) on a feeder river upstream. I think there’s several feet of water on the road where we were, pretty standard flooding.
Paula found the state list of road closures last evening – 14 pages. A few major roads in the White Mountains have multiple washouts and one bridge is likely destroyed. The list also included the dirt road by our yurt, but it could be north or south of it. We’ll try getting there from the north, but that means going through Canaan, and the NH Rt 4 & NH 118 intersection and surrounding area was flooded and evacuated last night. It’s probably okay now.
My daughter in MD didn’t have power as of last night, and probably doesn’t have it now.
Looks like Irene took a big bite out of ocean heat.
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2011/anomw.8.29.2011.gif
I wanna cry. I had a complete posting typed out here, hit one wrong key and it all disappeared!
IanM
While I appreciate that the NHS bulletins include Canadian references, some points in the one posted above puzzle me.
I live in New Brunswick, and had just barely heard of Fort Lawrence from travelling between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. A check confirmed that Fort Lawrence is on the Isthmus of Chignecto, where NS joins NB. However, apart from an archeological dig (and possible reconstruction of the former fort for touristic purposes???), Fort Lawrence is only a little rural community. I am curious why the larger town of Amherst was not used as the geographical reference.
Furthermore, the bulletin includes the words:
“A TROPICAL STORM WARNING IS IN EFFECT FOR…
“* SOUTH COAST OF NOVA SCOTIA FROM FORT LAWRENCE TO PORTERS LAKE”
Fort Lawrence is on the coast of NS, so continuing along that coast takes one along the coast of peninsular NS until one curves around the end of the peninsula and heads up the south coast, where one eventually finds the settlement of Porter’s Lake. I had not heard of Porter’s Lake before, and found that it is close to the major city of Halifax.
But I am still confused by the reference to the south coast of NS since a line from Fort Lawrence to Porter’s Lake goes through the middle of NS. It have made sense if the bulletin had stated that there would be strong winds above a line between Fort Lawrence and Porter’s Lake…..
IanM
Did Irene make land fall as a hurricane?. The definition i see of landfall is the center of hurricane crossing land, What i see is the track crossing land but not the center until it hit NY as a TS.
Friend of mine sat through the whole thing on the Jersey Shore and agrees it was much ado about nothing. Says he’s gone fishing in similar winds (maybe not quite as strong). Now the rain fall is somehwat a different story but again, blown way out of proportion. All in all a good excuse to hand out more money to constituents.
Sorry Jim the rainfall in NJ is not blown out of proportion, the shore may have dodged a bullet but inland it’s the worst flooding since a similar event in 1903!
Large, plodding and sloppy, it was.
Dang. Rain gauge at the yurt was clogged with a twig. I really wanted to see what it got. My wife wouldn’t let me drive across one washout (hey, it’s a Subaru) so we parked near there and walked. There were a couple interesting washouts before there. Downhill from the yurt a large culvert is washed out and will take quite a while to rebuild.
(3.17″ near Concord, radar estimates of a foot in places in the White Mountains, I’d guess some 6″ near the yurt on Mt Cardigain.)
Doing better than lotsa of places, Brattleboro VT looks like quite a mess. One building has a water mark just a brick or so off from the 1938 flood. Tell me again why ground-level wind speed is important.
Big storms bring big rains, even if they don’t stall.
Photos of impressive flooding in Vermont:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Vermont-Flooding-2011/212455332141871
Photos of pedestrian flood damage near our yurt in New Hampshire:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150352470306550.401978.701301549&l=65716fb8aa&type=1
Ian L. McQueen says:
August 29, 2011 at 7:21 am
Coastal storm warnings follow the coast, not a straight line. They’re more aimed
at mariners than landlubbers, and tend to use start and end points that of harbors and
other points of safety.
Hmm, I just looked at the map – I can see why you’re confused. The coastline is a lot longer
than the straight line!
And Fort Lawrence seems to be an odd place to start/end a warning.
The Firefox ‘Lazarus’ add-on is your saviour. Get it.