UPDATE: 114 mph wind gusts reported. See below.
March came in like a lion, and it looks like the lion isn’t leaving, but you can’t blame the “polar vortex” this time.
As a massive winter storm at sea known as a Nor’easter prepares to skirts the Northeast coast of the USA, bringing with it high seas and bitterly cold weather in its wake, Dr. Ryan Maue writes:
Massive Nor’easter will develop a warm-core thru a seclusion process.
Compare previous image w/Hurricane Sandy– same 850-mb Wind speed & MSLP. Nor’easter wind field much stronger/larger.
[It is] maybe 4 times more powerful than Sandy based on integrated KE of wind field.
The image of the storm is quite stunning for it’s sheer size. Images and animation follow.
Compare that to these satellite photos of Hurricane Sandy:
Watch this animation of the storm as it is forecast to develop, click it to get it to animate full size.
The biggest difference here is the track, Sandy made landfall in NYC, this nor’easter is not expected to there, but will skirt the coast and will make landfall later in Newfoundland, But, it will have a significant effect on the northeast USA due to its ability to transport air mass.
He adds:
Not the
#polarvortex this time. Textbook tropopause fold & baroclinic wrapup
What that will do is act like a pump, and pull bitterly cold air in behind it (note the stream in the rendering above). The result will be a late March like no other, possibly the coldest late March on record for the area:
The National Weather Service in Boston is preparing for blizzard like conditions in some areas, plus hurricane force winds at sea.
They are even asking readers to “make the call” on snow amounts.
UPDATE: 4:10PM PDT 3/26/14 While Jai Mitchell tries (unsuccessfully) to argue in comments that there’s no comparison to Hurricane Sandy, we get reports like this one from Environment Canada with 114 mph wind gusts and sustained winds of 86 mph:
@Tom J –
Wanna find out what that Tesla is made of? How ’bout taxpayer subsidies, paid by ordinary folk so that billionaires can get bargain prices on useless toys . . .
@richard Day –
Yeah, a handful of fanatics count for more than the national interest. I hope they DO get their asses frozen off. And while we’re at it, let each state pass a law making it illegal for energy opponents to use any . . .
Note that the 114 mph gusts are in Wreckhouse, NL, which is in the middle of a natural wind tunnel. Gusts of ~100 mph are not unusual during a powerful Nor’easter. Here’s a video of Blizzard conditions from Feb 2011:
Well, did not know about Wreckhouse before, always enjoy learning about the crazy things a bit of properly placed geography can do when the winds line up right… or wrong, from the point of view of an 18 wheeler having trouble keeping more than half of them on the ground.
Not sure where to post this, but weren’t these storms worse than “Hurricane Sandy”?:
10. According to New York City’s Office of Emergency Management, the last hurricane to pass directly over the city was in 1821. The storm surge was so high that the city was flooded up to Canal Street.
11. Hog Island, a one-mile-long island south of Rockaway Beach, was never seen again after the hurricane of 1893.
12. New York City’s leading hurricane historian, Nicholas Coch, a professor of coastal geology at Queens College, believes that this is the only reported incidence ever of the removal of an entire island by a hurricane.
Got this from my niece, a CBS NYC journalist, from this source with other NYC “facts”.:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/60-facts-that-will-make-nyc-feel-like-a-whole-new-place
One other thing about the 1821 NYC hurricane from Wackapedia:
“…one hurricane researcher remarked that the storm surge flooding would have been much worse, had the hurricane not struck at low tide…”
One other thing Mr Al Gore – Hurricane Sandy wouldn’t have been so bad had it not been for the spring tide…so it wasn’t the CO_2…
Do you think Al Gore reads this blog??
And just across the Cabot Strait from Wreckhouse comes this footage from another windy spot in Nova Scotia during yesterdays storm. The 100mph gusts were a little much for The Weather Network’s reporters:
http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/live-on-tv-winds-knocks-reporters-out-of-frame/23972/
Here was yesterday’s warnings from the NWS’s Ocean Prediction Center:
MARINE WEATHER DISCUSSION FOR N ATLANTIC OCEAN
NWS OCEAN PREDICTION CENTER WASHINGTON DC
235 PM EDT WED MAR 26 2014
…
.WARNINGS…PRELIMINARY.
.NT1 NEW ENGLAND WATERS…
.ANZ081…GULF OF MAINE… HURRICANE FORCE TODAY. STORM TONIGHT.
GALE THU.
.ANZ082…GEORGES BANK… HURRICANE FORCE TODAY INTO TONIGHT.
GALE THU.
.ANZ083…SOUTH OF NEW ENGLAND… HURRICANE FORCE TODAY. STORM
TONIGHT. GALE THU.