Saturday - October 29, 2011
Snow???? No!!!!
Damn this Climate Chaos stuff! It feels like I’m back in Binghamton. Aaarrggh! It’s all algore’s fault!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111!!
N.J. gets its first snowfall of the season
The fall foliage has added a new color to its palette in parts of northern New Jersey today: white.
Inch counts have risen and storm predictions have grown more dire throughout the day as snow began to fall throughout the region this morning. The National Weather Service has dubbed today’s Nor’easter an “historic early season snowstorm” for much of New Jersey, the Lower Hudson Valley and southern Connecticut.
The weather service reports that a low-pressure system off the coast of North Carolina was moving north, causing “a swath of heavy, wet and potentially damaging snow.”
The storm will pull out of the Mid-Atlantic region by evening and continue north to New England where Massachusetts’ Berkshires and the southern Green Mountains of Vermont could see between 10 and 15 inches of snow. Jersey should see its last flakes at around 10 p.m., officials said.
While predicting 2 to 4 inches earlier today, forecasters ratcheted up inch counts to a possible 6 to 10 inches for Morris, Hunterdon, Somerset, Sussex and Essex counties, as temperatures dropped to the lower 30’s and precipitation increased toward the afternoon hours.
I almost felt sorry for Peiper, coming home to a “cold and damp home”, except that it’s 24 degrees warmer where he is compared to here. Here in St. Clouds Hunterdon County, we’re having winter. Before Halloween.
WTF people, WTF. Sloppy white stuff started coming down here by 9am. By 11:30 we had about 3 inches on the ground, causing really bad driving conditions. Naturally I was out in it; my customer called with a “The front door won’t close and we need sidewalk salt really bad!” message. So I went down there, foolishly taking the back roads, which were white knuckle treacherous. Made it in only double the usual time. And wasn’t it just too much freakin’ fun coming down that steep hill into town, slipping sideways, with the anti-lock brakes going off constantly and making all sorts of strange noises? Thankfully that hill isn’t too long, with only one reverse camber curve above a deep drainage ditch, so I was able to get all the way down on what seemed like just one breath.
The customer had a whole 25lb bag of calcium salt under the sink in the bathroom. Bastige. So I shoveled the walkways and salted. Then I fixed the door, which is a metal frame bit of junk in a cinderblock wall, so it always needs to be raised up in the fall when it contracts, and then lowered in the spring so that the bugs don’t crawl in underneath when it expands. And I’m out doing that in the rainy snowy mix, with great clumps of the mess falling down from the roof all around me. It’s only a 15 minute job, but it’s still a P.I.T.A., made worse by today’s weather. We took the main road home after waiting 20 minutes to get some gas. People just shift into turbo-stupid mode when the weather hits, and the gas station was a frickin’ zoo. Assmunch 2 cars up the line filled his truck, then it’s auxiliary tank, then half a dozen 5 gallon jerry cans full. Yeah, like he’s not going to be able to get gas for a week. Hoser. OTOH, he might be right. Power is failing all across the state as the sloppy mess builds up on trees that still have their leaves and brings them down across the wires. We’ve even lost power here in Clinton a couple times, and all our lines are underground. Not enough to reset the clocks, but just enough to cause the PC to reboot. Gak, one of these days I am going to break down and get another UPS. I have one, but right now it’s connected to the TV and DVR downstairs.
We tried to take the main road back home, but it was a total jam, bumper to bumper. Nothing was moving other than the police and fire vehicles, as they responded to traffic accident after traffic accident. Bad weather to be out driving in! So we ducked into the local Longhorne for an extended lunch, and hung out there eating and chatting with the wait staff for nearly 2 hours. That gave the county a chance to get out the plows and the salt trucks and fix the roads at least somewhat. So the rest of the drive home wasn’t easy, but it was smooth sailing compared to going down there.
At this point I’m poking around in the fridge looking for a beer, but not finding one I’ll settle for a coffee. Then a nap sounds good.
We’ve had at least 4 inches of slop at this point, but it’s so wet it compacts pretty fast so it’s hard to tell. Every couple of minutes we hear another swoosh, thump! as another mini-avalanche lets go from the roof. And it’s still coming down pretty hard.
And I’ve got an outside window job lined up for tomorrow morning. Oy vey.
Give yourself a 2 point bonus if you recognized the “Here in St. Clouds” reference straight off. Eh Homer? Goodnight you princes of Maine, you kings of New England!
Posted by Drew458
on 10/29/2011 at 02:35 PM
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Permalink • Friday - October 07, 2011
Happy To Be Dry
I feel like celebrating. Today is the 4th day in a row that it has not rained*. That makes this the longest “drought” period here since mid-July. The monthly report is out from our state climatologist, and he confirms what I’ve posted here: it has hardly done a thing but rain since July 24th.
Don’t be mislead by the above chart. This only shows departure from average, it does not show total precipitation. (We had record breaking amounts of snow in January, but that barely made a blip on this graph.) It is also a state-wide average, balancing the wetter areas against the drier ones. Where I live, definitely a wetter area, in the northern part of Hunterdon County, we have had more than half a year’s average rainfall in the past two months. Probably closer to two thirds of a years worth than a half.
July:
Two weeks of no significant rain and really hot weather in the middle of the month allowed the rivers and streams still swollen from the spring runoff to finally get down to their median levels.Almost daily storms roamed parts of the state during the final week, with the 24th bringing Sea Isle City (Cape May) 2.45” and Woodbine 1.95”. The northwest was wettest on the 25th, with Stockton (Hunterdon) coming in with 1.80”, Bethlehem Township (Hunterdon) at 1.76” and Greenwich Township (Warren) with 1.74”.
August:
17.72” of rain measured in Lambertville (southern Hunterdon County).
There were thirteen events in August that deposited at least 0.99” at one or more locations. [ days with less than an inch of rain not reported, but there were plenty of them too ]September:
The beat goes on. September brought much of New Jersey a very wet month; this on the heels of record-shattering August rainfall. So too were temperatures well above normal; thus continuing an almost unbroken string of warmer-than-average months extending back to spring 2010. With three months remaining in 2011, the Garden State is knocking on the door of both the wettest (1996) and warmest (1998) years on record since statewide averages began to be compiled in 1895.Returning back to this past September, the wettest portion of NJ was in the northwest where the Mt. Olive (Morris County) CoCoRaHS station saw the most rain, an impressive 16.88”. With just a few drops less, Blairstown (Warren) received 16.87”, with Oxford Township (Warren) coming in with 16.28”. It should be noted that none of these totals include rain that fell after approximately 7AM on the 30th ... as those totals will be included with rain falling before 7AM on October 1 as part of October’s totals.
The three wettest stations above also lead the way with remarkable August-September totals that include 34.43” in Mt. Olive, 34.31” in Blairstown, and 32.59” at Oxford. Some stations in Sussex, Passaic, and Hunterdon counties also had at least 30.00”.
Only eight September days failed to see measurable rain fall at one or more NJ stations (1st-4th, 13th, 18th, 19th and 26th). The first and largest event of the month was associated with a moist tropical feed of moisture that included the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee. Between the 5th and 8th, centered on a very wet 6th, as much as 9.48” fell in Blairstown, 9.45” in Liberty Township (Warren), and 9.18” in Oxford Township.
Oxford is just a few miles north of here, over the line into Warren County. Weather-wise it’s pretty much the same as us. We don’t seem to have enough data gathering stations here in Hunterdon, so I’m going to have to infer a bit, but it looks pretty sure that we had 30-34” of rain since August, and you can add in another 4” for the last week in July, and perhaps another 2” for the start of October.
Currently our local water table is at less than 13.5 feet, which means that the ground beneath us is saturated at a level barely deeper than the foundations of the houses in the area. Oops. That’s twice as high as it normally is, and conditions are similar across most of the state.
Bottom line: It’s a pretty good bet that my corner of NJ has received as much as 40” of rain since the 25th of July, and there have only been about 10 days in that 75 day period when it hasn’t rained at least a little. I sure wish we could install a run-off pipeline that came out in Texas. If it doesn’t rain until winter sets in, that’s fine with me. We need a chance to dry off.
* = actually, I’m wrong. According to the data it rained here the first 5 days of the month. Which would explain the damp parking lots and the wet siding on the houses in the mornings. But that hasn’t been “real” rain, just heavy dew or some light night drippings. If I were to use that methods, then it has rained here 83 days since the beginning of May - 160 days. Hmmmph, actually that seems about right. Please no more rain. Please.
Posted by Drew458
on 10/07/2011 at 03:47 PM
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Permalink • Saturday - October 01, 2011
I’m Melting, Melting, Meeeelting
Old ice is much better than new ice apparently, so when a bit of the old goes away it becomes news. We see this story, or one very much like it, every fall, because that’s when the summer melt in the Arctic is at it’s greatest. In another 5 or 6 weeks things will freeze solid once again.
Canadian Arctic nearly loses entire ice shelf
Two ice shelves that existed before Canada was settled by Europeans diminished significantly this summer, one nearly disappearing altogether, Canadian scientists say in new research.
...
Luke Copland is an associate professor in the geography department at the University of Ottawa who co-authored the research. He said the Serson Ice Shelf shrank from 79.15 square miles (205 square kilometers) to two remnant sections three years ago, and was further diminished this past summer.Copland said the shelf went from a 16-square-mile (42-square-kilometer) floating glacier tongue to 9.65 square miles (25 square kilometers), and the second section from 13.51 square miles (35 square kilometers) to 2 square miles (7 square kilometers), off Ellesmere Island’s northern coastline.
This past summer, Ward Hunt Ice Shelf’s central area disintegrated into drifting ice masses, leaving two separate ice shelves measuring 87.65 and 28.75 square miles (227 and 74 square kilometers) respectively, reduced from 131.7 square miles (340 square kilometers) the previous year.
“It has dramatically broken apart in two separate areas and there’s nothing in between now but water,” said Copland.
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Ice shelves, which began forming at least 4,500 years ago, are much thicker than sea ice, which is typically less than a few feet (meters) thick and survives up to several years.Canada has the most extensive ice shelves in the Arctic along the northern coast of Ellesmere Island. These floating ice masses are typically 131 feet (40 meters) thick (equivalent to a 10-story building), but can be as much as 328 feet (100 meters) thick. They thickened over time via snow and sea ice accumulation, along with glacier inflow in certain places.
The northern coast of Ellesmere Island contains the last remaining ice shelves in Canada, with an estimated area of 217 square miles (563 square kilometers), Mueller said.
Between 1906 and 1982, there has been a 90 percent reduction in the areal extent of ice shelves along the entire coastline, according to data published by W.F. Vincent at Quebec’s Laval University. The former extensive “Ellesmere Island Ice Sheet” was reduced to six smaller, separate ice shelves: Serson, Petersen, Milne, Ayles, Ward Hunt and Markham. In 2005, the Ayles Ice Shelf whittled almost completely away, as did the Markham Ice Shelf in 2008 and the Serson this year.
In 2008 satellites saw that the Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route were open simultaneously for the first time since satellite measurements began in the 1970s – and now it has happened again.
While the Northern Sea Route above Russia (also known as the Northeast Passage) has been open to shipping traffic since mid-August, recent satellite data show that the most direct course in the Northwest Passage now appears to be navigable as well.
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Weather patterns have been different this year, but the early opening of the passages indicates that we could be about to hit a new record low in ice cover.“The minimum ice extent is still three to four weeks away, and a lot depends on the weather conditions over the Arctic during those weeks,” says Leif Toudal Pedersen, a senior scientist at the Danish Meteorological Institute.
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During the last 30 years, satellites observing the Arctic have witnessed reductions in the minimum ice extent at the end of summer from around 8 million sq km in the early 1980s to the historic minimum of less than 4.24 million sq km in 2007.Before the advent of satellites, obtaining measurements of sea ice was difficult: the Arctic is both inaccessible and prone to long periods of bad weather and extended darkness.
I’d say it’s time to start working this annual opening into our plans, and maybe hurry up and lay some trenched seabed oil pipelines from Alaska across to the St. Lawrence Seaway.
Meanwhile, the whales are stealing a march on the humans, and happily swimming across the top of the world looking for new flavors of tasty krill and some hot whale nookie action.
For the first time, scientists have documented bowhead whales traveling from opposite sides of the Canadian High Arctic and mingling in the Northwest Passage, a usually ice-clogged route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
There have been other hints that geographically separate populations of these air-breathing mammals traversed the Arctic when the ice cover shrinks, including signs of genetic mixing between populations and 19th-century reports of harpoon heads of Atlantic origin showing up in whales on the western side of the Arctic.
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“Given recent rates of sea ice loss, climate change may eliminate geographical divisions between stocks of bowhead whales and open new areas that have not been inhabited by bowhead whales for millennia,”
Right, because that thing with the harpoons - a mere 160 years ago - hasn’t happened for millennia - thousands of years. See the above quote about life before satellites: we really have no frickin’ idea how often and how fully these passages have opened up in the past.
Posted by Drew458
on 10/01/2011 at 10:28 AM
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Permalink • Thursday - September 29, 2011
Not Again
Sure, we got hit pretty bad from Irene and then the deluge from tropical storm Lee. But when the flood waters went down, the rains continued. It’s been the rainiest summer I can remember, and it isn’t over yet. With the water tables so high it doesn’t take much to push us back into flooding, but dear old Mother Nature has been extra generous and given us “lots” when we didn’t even want “not much”.
We’re in flood alarm again right now. We’ve had at least 4” of rain since yesterday, and the big cloudburst last night was the proverbial camel’s last straw. So another day of minor flooding, another couple of roads closed, another few days of detours and inconvenience. Great.
In Morris County, a woman waited for rescuers on the roof of her car as an overflowing creek in Flanders breached its banks.
Elsewhere in Morris County, the floodwaters gushed so suddenly they ripped up the asphalt along Schooley’s Mountain Road in Washington Township.
In Sussex County, Sparta High School students learned a new term — flood day — when they were dismissed early because of inundated roads.
Across western and central New Jersey today, already water-weary communities faced a new round of flooding. Just a month after Hurricane Irene drowned parts of the state, overnight rainfall caused waterways to swell and overtake their banks. Residents once again faced road closures, detours and water rescues.
The dangerous conditions are expected to continue tomorrow. This evening, the National Weather Service issued flash flood watches for Morris, Somerset and Hunterdon counties through tomorrow afternoon.
Meteorologists said the heavy rains pummeling New Jersey could bring a second successive month of record precipitation.
The totals are nothing short of epic, said David Robinson, the state climatologist. The average statewide rainfall — about 22 inches since August 1 — appears to be a once-in-a-millennium epochal event.
“What we have recorded recently is so far off the charts that statistically it looks like it’s something that occurs every 1,000 years,” Robinson said of the rainfall totals for August and September.
New Jersey’s precipitation is usually evenly distributed over all 12 months, Robinson said. This year, the state has received the equivalent of two-thirds of its annual rainfall in the last two months alone.
At this rate, New Jersey will likely break the state record of 59.98 inches of precipitation, set in 1996, Robinson said. So far, rainfall statewide has averaged about 51 inches.
And more wet weather is on the way.
I am amazed we haven’t smashed all the old records by now. Don’t forget we had more than double our quota of snow this past winter as well. Rutgers publishes some monthly precip numbers going back to 1895, but I don’t know where they get their data from. Their numbers don’t show anything atypical about last winter’s snows (we had 42.8" of snow in January alone, after getting half a foot in the blizzard right after Christmas), and their August rain numbers are low by half a foot or more. I guess the numbers are normalized across the state. All I know is that it has been soggy here in one way or another since last Thanksgiving. And I’m really tired of it.
Posted by Drew458
on 09/29/2011 at 10:32 AM
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Permalink • Monday - September 12, 2011
Mild Storm Shatters UK???
* Britain hit by winds of up to 80mph
* Thousands of homes across central England lose power
* All high-speed ferries from Portsmouth to France are canceled
Britain was today lashed by winds of up to 80mph which tore roofs off buildings, uprooted trees and knocked power out to thousands of homes.
In the worst storm to hit the UK in 15 years, ferries were cancelled and motorists were warned to take extra care when driving.
A couple from Wales have told how they were woken in the night to discover their entire roof had blown off in Hurricane Katia’s 60mph gales.
Ports around Britain have been battered by huge waves leading to the cancellation of ferries while trees have been uprooted, causing damage to cars and houses.
The swirling remnants of Hurricane Katia have crossed the Atlantic and hit land by this morning, sweeping across large swathes of the country.
Forecasters issued urgent weather alerts for Scotland, Northern Ireland, the North East, North West and parts of the Midlands and Wales as the storm prepares to make its way eastwards.
The high winds have been accompanied by heavy rain and the Environment Agency has issued several flood alerts for inland and coastal areas.
In County Durham workers had their cars crushed after a newly-installed roof was torn off a building and landed on more than 15 vehicles.
As gales of up to 50mph hit struck, the entire roof flew off a building under construction at the Littleburn Industrial Estate, Langley Moor, over a fence and smashed onto the parked cars at the neighbouring Bako Northern site, around 10 feet away.
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Increasing wind speeds as the hurricane approached forced the cancellation of high speed ferries to France from Portsmouth.
Brittany Ferries said it was scrapping its high speed ferries on two crossings scheduled from Portsmouth to Cherbourg today.
Safety regulations state that when waves reach a height of 10 feet or more the high speed crossings must not go ahead. A spokesman for the company said it hopes to have all services operating as usual by tomorrow.
Thousands of homes, shops and business across central England were blacked out this morning when the hurricane winds damaged overhead power lines.
Central Networks said ‘an overhead incident’ had left 51 homes in Oxfordshire, 806 properties in Northamptonshire, two properties in Warwickshire and around a further 1,650 properties as far apart as Derbyshire and Gloucestershire without electricity.
Gusts of 73mph hit Capel Curig in North Wales at 5am today.
The Environment Agency has issued several flood alerts for inland and coastal areas.
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Organisers of the America’s Cup lifted out all the boats taking part in the international sailing competition in Plymouth as 70mph gusts swept the Devon coast today.
This Met Office map shows where the storm has concentrated todayThis Met Office map shows where the storm has concentrated today
Nine catamarans from seven countries taking part in the event were removed from the water and taken ashore because of fears that the boats - worth up to £800,000 each - could be damaged by the hurricane.
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The western coast of Anglesey has also been issued with an alert with waves of up to two metres high expected to lash certain areas, while water levels at Derwent Water, Cumbria, remain high. The South East and South West will largely escape its wrath, but wind speeds are still expected to reach up to 50mph in places, the Met Office said.
Forecasters issued a yellow alert, warning people to be on their guard, for more than half of the country and placed several areas on amber alert – the second-highest of four levels. There were warnings the storm could disrupt road and rail networks and damage buildings, and trees could be uprooted.
The worst conditions will be in northern and western parts of England and central and southern Scotland. The Environment Agency issued flood alerts for the North East, North West and Wales. Coastal areas are said to be at greatest risk of flooding with strong winds to gales, large waves and a surge coinciding with high tides. High winds will continue into tomorrow before petering out on Wednesday. Homeowners were warned to check for loose tiles and bring garden furniture indoors to help prevent flying debris.
Well, to be a little fair and balanced, they have closed some roads ...
The M6, one of the UK’s busiest motorways, was closed at the Thelwall viaduct in Cheshire because of high winds, with drivers advised to use the M61 as a diversion. Barton Bridge on the M60 Manchester outer ring road was also closed.
Sharp gusts and the beginnings of gales were reported on the north-west coast and in Snowdonia, adding strength to Met Office warnings of potential disruption, damage and flooding.
The Met Office severe weather warning map for Monday has the whole of central and southern Scotland under an amber block denoting “be prepared”, stretching south into North Yorkshire and Cumbria. An area of pale yellow, meaning “be aware”, covers the rest of Scotland, Northern Ireland, parts of Wales and England as far south as Lincolnshire.
... and shut down many of their vaunted wind turbines, because they can’t deal with the wind ...
Britain’s energy network operator National Grid may need to shut down a number of wind power farms on Monday night as strong winds threaten to overload the transmission system with electricity at times when demand is low, a spokesman said.
“If we’ve got constraints and too much generation we’ll go back in there. Nothing (is decided) yet today but if it stays this windy, we may have to look at it,” he said.
The grid operator had to shut down 750 megawatts (MW) of wind power capacity in Scotland on Saturday night and 300 MW on Sunday night as the network was congested.
I’m sure everything will be fine and dandy and all cleaned up by Wednesday at the latest. After all, it’s hardly more than a bit of wind and light rain at the end of a very wet summer, and with their wonderful infrastructure, well made homes and roads, underground utilities and massive government, there won’t be a single tree that lies fallen for more than an hour before it gets chopped up and cleared away. Certainly there won’t be any flooding; such things are simply un-British and thus not done. Sharon Churcher will be proud.
There could be one really bright spot in this: hurricanes and tornadoes just love to destroy mobile homes and RVs ... what the English call caravans ... in which so many of those gypsies and travelers live!
Posted by Drew458
on 09/12/2011 at 11:17 AM
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Permalink • Friday - September 09, 2011
We lucked out again
We’ve been on a “boil water advisory” for several days now, because the ultra-high water table from all this rain and flooding has allowed some septic system run-off to contaminate some of our town’s water wells. That advisory was lifted today. Thousands, perhaps several millions, of others here in the north east aren’t so lucky. Actually, they’re lucky to have a water truck in their town at all, whether or not they choose to put on heels and pearls to go fill up a bucket like Miss Brit the other day.
Nasty floodwaters from the remnants of Lee and Irene—tainted with sewage and other toxins—threaten public health in parts of the Northeast by direct exposure or the contamination of private water wells, officials said Thursday.
“We face a public health emergency because sewage treatment plants are underwater and no longer working,” Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett said as flooding from Lee’s drenching rains inundated central and eastern Pennsylvania. “Flood water is toxic and polluted. If you don’t have to be in it, keep out.”
A dozen Vermont towns flooded by Irene were still on boil-water orders 12 days later, though officials reported no waterborne illness. Similar precautions have been taken throughout other storm-damaged states.
New York City officials said any threat from Irene’s backwash had passed, but upstate, 23 municipal water systems had boil-water orders for varying lengths of time. As some communities in New Jersey and Pennsylvania were taking similar precautions after Irene, the unrelenting rains of Lee were expected to trigger more.
Officials in Maryland, Delaware and the District of Columbia, which were also hit hard by Irene, said drinking-water quality had not been compromised.
Stretching from central Virginia up through New York and into New England, the latest area hit by this round of flooding and water contamination is considerably larger than the entire United Kingdom, and probably has more people as well. And this is all inland areas, mostly unaffected by any coastal hurricanes. They’ve got their own problems down south too, as Lee made an impact up and down the whole east coast.
Is it inconvenient? A little. Is it costly? A tiny bit. A shopping cart full of water set me back $20, and will last the two of us for several weeks. But it could have been so damn much worse:
WILKES-BARRE, Pa. (AP) — The Susquehanna River, swollen by the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee, spilled into downtown Binghamton on Thursday and threatened riverfront towns in Pennsylvania, and nearly 100,000 people were ordered to pack up and leave their homes.
The storm’s rains continued to pelt the Northeast, which has been saturated since Hurricane Irene roared through in August as it became a tropical storm. Rivers and streams passed or approached flood stage from Maryland to Massachusetts and experts said more flooding was coming.
River water coursed into the streets of Binghamton, a city of about 45,000, and climbed halfway up lampposts at a downtown plaza. Buses and then boats were used to evacuate residents, and National Guard helicopters were on standby. Streets were closed to non-emergency traffic.
“It’s going to get worse,” said Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Rainfall totals topped 8 inches in some areas around Binghamton.
The Susquehanna is an ancient ancient river, perhaps the oldest on earth and easily the longest river on the east coast, but it’s in flood from upstate NY (Cooperstown) all the way down to the Chesapeake Bay. Right past Three Mile Island, as a matter of fact.
We will continue to use our 3 stage filter on the water that comes out of the tap for cooking water, and we have no plans to actually drink any of it until we’ve gone through all the inexpensive bottled spring water we bought (Nirvana brand, $1/gal in a clear plastic bottle. Not bad tasting at all). I still have enough to last another week, so any latent problems in the wells and pipes should be sorted out by then. Well, assuming we don’t have another deluge and another flood situation between now and then. Personally, I blame Obama.
Posted by Drew458
on 09/09/2011 at 05:23 PM
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Permalink • this might not be the right time to try p****** into the wind.
Oh great. We’re really looking forward to this like a case of the flu.
Batten down the hatches – there’s a HURRICANE heading to the UK
Katia expected to lash parts of Britain by Monday
Winds of 80 miles an hour and waves of up to 50ft look set to hit the UK by Monday after Hurricane Katia changed course from the Caribbean with its eye set for Britain.
Forecasters are predicting fierce gusts of wind that could cause transport chaos and structural damage from late on Sunday night and into Monday with torrential rain battering much of the country.
However .... wanna bet the America haters will blame Bush and the USA for the direction change.
Katia has so far avoided land and yesterday turned north east heading away from the U.S. coast and towards the UK.
Posted by peiper
on 09/09/2011 at 10:25 AM
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Permalink • Thursday - September 08, 2011
I’m beginning to feel like Noah
It’s still raining. 5 days of it now. We’ve had drizzle, we’ve had downpours, we’ve had every kind of rain in between, and multiple thunderstorms too. The only thing we haven’t had is strong winds.
Coming home late last night from work I got caught in such a torrent of a thunderstorm that I could barely see to drive. Being the only car on the local highway at 1am, I chugged along at 35mph with the dashed white line right under me, riding halfway between the lanes. That put my car up on the crown of the road. The lines were the only thing I could see, and the sides of the road were quickly flooded. It rained that hard for at least another hour. Weather Channel was saying we’d get perhaps 1/4”. Phooey, I’m sure we got at least 3” from that downpour alone.
And it’s still drizzling this morning.
Unlike Noah, I’m fresh out of gopher wood, so I had to make due with oak:
doors and hinges from DDC Industries. Quality stuff is never inexpensive.
It took me more than 2 hours to rehang those doors with the spring hinges and adjust them. It’s a fussy job! You need a lot of patience to do this job right, and a set of precision calipers really helps. A jack stand and an extra pair or two of hands wouldn’t hurt either. But I soldiered on alone, and they came out just about perfect. I may have set the spring tension a bit too high ... they’re a bit “catapulty” right now and snap close right smartly. Oh well. It only takes a minute to change the tension.
5 days of rain isn’t going to set any kind of record; I lived through 40+ days of it one year up in Binghamton NY. But this has been 5 days of non-stop rain, all day all night every day. The almost constant beep beep beep of the nanny state’s safety message on the television - “a flood warning has been issued for your area” - has become background noise. After a while you hardly even notice it.
Posted by Drew458
on 09/08/2011 at 08:35 AM
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Permalink • Tuesday - September 06, 2011
here we go again
Is the northeast about to have another round of flooding? Wouldn’t surprise me. Just a few days after an earthquake shook things up a bit and loosened the soil the Atlantic coast got slammed by Irene. While the winds may not have been terribly atrocious and the old girl was quickly downgraded to a tropical storm, she still managed to dump a foot or more of rain on just about everybody in less than a day. Huge floods resulted. Now, just a few days later, the remains of tropical storm Lee are making their way up the Appalachias and bringing another foot of rain, spread out over a solid week. With tornadoes! And for extra gits and shiggles we’ve got Katia coming up north, hopefully staying out to sea and veering off to the east to go slam Iceland by the end of the week or something. But that’s just the prediction, and it’s really difficult to predict how a chaotic event like a hurricane is really going to behave.
Bottom line is that the water logged north is going to have another foot or more of rain, when it’s just barely had a chance to drain off below flood stage. It’s already been raining here in NJ for a full day now, and the forecast is for steady rain until Saturday. Just what we needed. I wonder if FEMA has rescue and relief plans in place to come save FEMA? This weather BS is becoming recursively redundant. We just might have to import a second Brit reporter to complain about it.
Posted by Drew458
on 09/06/2011 at 08:52 AM
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Permalink • Thursday - September 01, 2011
Surviving Irene - Local Vermont Hero
Git ‘er done!
opens town to outside world
or at least really helping lots of people all at once
without taking much personal risk
A little less trapped
KILLINGTON — Craig Mosher looked up the road and saw his next job. It wasn’t one he asked for.
The owner of Mosher Excavating, Inc. on Route 4 in Killington has been lauded by Killington townspeople for his rapid response to historic flooding that washed out a huge section of road just north of his home and business.
Since Monday, Mosher and four of his employees, who rode into work on ATVs, have used the company’s own excavating equipment to completely rebuild the road and redirect a brook into its normal path at the key intersection of Route 4 and River Road.
They’ve worked sunup to sundown.
Because of Mosher, more than 300 out-of-towners got out of Killington Wednesday morning and headed toward Woodstock and the interstate, and food and supplies can be delivered into town from the east.
Because of him, water isn’t flowing into the Kokopelli Inn, Goodro Lumber or into the rooms of houses anymore.
Because of him, the town feels less trapped.
“I’m not a hero, I just own an excavating company,” Mosher said, eating a salad for lunch as he leaned on his bulldozer Wednesday.
Mosher was given the go-ahead by the state to rebuild the road for access and redirect the brook as best as he could.
[Prior to the repair work] there was no way into town and no way out, the result of raging water that grew in otherwise calm brooks after the area received upwards of 6 inches of rain in a 24-hour period.
Smart move getting the Ok from the state ahead of time, but I kinda doubt that would have stopped them from doing what was necessary. Real Vermonters fix the problems then get back to work.
Mosher excavating owns about a dozen pieces of heavy equipment from diggers to graders to rollers and dumptrucks. They’ve been building roads and ponds, terracing hillsides, digging foundations and putting in septic tanks across Vermont and New Hampshire for years.
A dusty one-lane road out of Killington was open for three hours today. At least 400 cars packed with stranded tourists from Manhattan to Moscow slipped out, according to town Selectman Jim Haff.
“Craig is definitely a local hero,” said Roger Rivera, 33, an emergency worker with the state. “This is what Vermonters do. We don’t wait for help. We get it done ourselves.”
Residents had yet to be visited by FEMA workers, Haff said this morning. They are using public and private equipment to jury-rig as much infrastructure as possible, he said. Route 4 beyond Killington, while passable, is dangerous and few warning signs have been posted.
“FEMA is trying its hardest,” said Rivera. “But the whole state is a mess, and they can’t be everywhere.”
Refugee tourists were grateful for the escape route.
Killington? Yeah, the place that has had the big ski resorts. Had. Oh they’re still there, but it’s doubtful that they will have a season this winter. When Irene hit the area she dropped a foot of rain on the mountains in short order. In winter that all comes down as snow and is a blessing for the ski industry. In summer that’s rain, and what makes it to the bottom of the hill is mud. The Killington base lodge is in a sea of mud, and reports are that at two of the main buildings has foundation damage. Nearby Pico ski resort is also saying “closed for the season” before the season even gets close to beginning. Here’s a reverse color satellite image of the Killington resort. Red is trees, gray is mud:
For more on the ski resort story, see Bruce Sussman’s blog.
Posted by Drew458
on 09/01/2011 at 02:43 PM
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Permalink • Tuesday - August 30, 2011
Dealing With Irene
Vermont may be making all the news right now with the unprecedented flooding they’re having, but Vermont is not alone. Plenty of flooding all up and down the East Coast. New Jersey got it’s share and then some, being one of the three states where the hurricane made landfall.
We live up on a hill, about 60 feet above the rest of the town. All of our utility lines are underground. Thank God for that; we had no flooding, and only lost power for maybe half an hour, plus a dozen little 1 minute outages later on. Most folks in the state did not get off anywhere near as lightly. Clinton’s iconic image is the old red mill, which sits on a mill pond by a dam right on the edge of downtown. The dam held, but for a while the waters came over the side of the pond. Here’s a link to a video of the flood running through our downtown Monday. It looks a bit worse than it is; downtown has nice tall curbs that kept most of the water in check.
Elsewhere around the state ...
The Rockaway River ate Rt 287 at Boonton. NJ has 4 major east-west highways: Rt 80, Rt78, the NJ Turnpike, and the Atlantic City Expressway. The Garden State Parkway runs north-south down the east side of the state. Rt 287 is a huge ring road that connects to NY Rt 17 and the Thruway at the north end and the Holland Tunnel and the Garden State Parkway at the south end. It’s pretty much a third of a giant circle that encloses the super-suburban area, and the center of the circle is New York City. Boonton is just north of where Rt 80 hits Rt 287. So maybe you can get there from here, but you can’t get back.
Rescuing the rescuers. The Manville fire department had to rescue some National Guard troops when rising waters overtook their trucks. That is not a river they are in, it’s Main St. Manville is about 35 miles south of Boonton on Rt 287. Manville isn’t far from Boundbrook, an inauspiciously named town that always floods. I’m sure they’re underwater still. So many of the state’s most populated areas are right next to Raritan Bay, which had big-time storm surge. And that’s where many of the rivers and streams wind up. Heck, geologically the whole area is called the Newark Basin. Duh.
A huge source of pictures and stories on the NJ flood situation can be found here, with tons of links to more, like this photo page. As far as I know, there has only been one fatality so far, a first responder down in Princeton.
If you lived in Joisey, your feet would probably be wet right now.
I think I’ll try and take the back way and the high roads up to bowling tonight. The main road crosses several streams and rivers, including the Musconetcong. It may not yet be passable. Duh, maybe I should call first and see if the alley even has power.
Posted by Drew458
on 08/30/2011 at 02:01 PM
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Permalink • Saturday - August 27, 2011
Irene Comes Calling
It’s been raining steadily for 6 hours now. Sometimes we get a surging downpour that lasts a few minutes, but most of the time it’s just a steady rain. Nothing biblical at this point. I did the far away half of my Sunday cleaning job this afternoon. If I get to the local part tomorrow, fine. If not, fine.
It’s amazingly quiet outside. It kind of reminds me of 9/12/01 when there was no air traffic, except this is even more than that. There is no road traffic. We live a few hundred yards from one of the three great trans-NJ highways; NJ is the pass through state, with hundreds of thousands of folks driving through the state every day from PA to NY. Or at least east to west and west to east across the state. So if I go outside I can always hear the highway, any hour of the day or night, no matter what. But not now.
The talking heads and the Powers That Be have been on the TV and on the radio constantly for the past two days. Our Governor, Chris Christie, noted for his sharp remarks, has infamously outdone himself this time: “You’ve maximized your tan, now get the hell off the beach!” No BS from the big guy. Love him. And I guess everyone finally listened. Down at the south end of the state just about the entire Cape May County has been evacuated. The whole county. 800,000 people. Beats me where they’re going, or staying. But the whole coast is shut down, boarded up, and emptied. They are not alone. I saw several local businesses with their windows boarded up, and most of the rest of them closed early. Get out, go home. I heard this afternoon that there were several small armies of cherry picker trucks and wood chipper rigs heading into the state from points west, and marshaling just inside the border. Getting ready.
The quiet outside is really amazing. The whole state is hunkered down, waiting. The breezes are picking up now. I’m listening to the leaves rattle on the trees. It’s far more than a sussuration, but no branches or twigs are flying around yet.
And “outside, a wind was rising”.
Posted by Drew458
on 08/27/2011 at 09:11 PM
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Permalink • Friday - July 29, 2011
So Busted
A leading climate scientist whose report in 2006 of drowning polar bears in Arctic waters galvanized the global warming movement—and were highlighted in Al Gore’s Oscar-winning climate-change documentary—has been suspended, possibly over the accuracy of his observations.
Charles Monnett—who manages as much as $50 million worth of climate research on Arctic wildlife and ecology—was told on July 18 that he was being put on leave pending an investigation into “integrity issues”, according to a letter posted online by the advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), which is questioning Monnett’s suspension.
The complaints against the Anchorage-based scientist with the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) remain unclear, and the connection to his seven-page 2006 peer-reviewed paper on the drownings are unknown, despite a months-long or longer investigation.
PEER charges Monnett’s suspension amounts to a witch hunt.
“The quality and continuity of the scientific work he’s overseeing is distinctly being jeopardized,” Jeff Ruch, PEER’s executive director, told FoxNews.com.
His group alleges the Interior Department is violating its own rules and regulations, and that the ongoing investigation seems intended merely to disrupt Monnett’s body of scientific work.
Myron Ebell, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, could not speak directly to Monnett’s case but said he believes the public has a right to be skeptical about scientific claims related to global warming.
Even if every scientist is objective, “what we’re being asked to do is turn our economy around and spend trillions and trillions of dollars on the basis of claims about what’s going to happen to the climate,” he said, adding later: “If global warming really takes hold here in the next few years and bad things start to happen, then we can act. But right now, I think we should just be sitting on our hands, observing.”
Documents provided by PEER indicate investigators are focusing on observations that Monnett and fellow researcher Jeffrey Gleason made in 2004, while conducting an aerial survey of bowhead whales. The report said they observed four dead polar bears floating in Arctic waters after a storm. They detailed their observations in an article published two years later in the journal Polar Biology; presentations also were given at scientific gatherings.
...In the peer-reviewed article, the researchers said they were reporting, to the best of their knowledge, the first observations of polar bears floating dead offshore and presumed drowned while apparently swimming long distances in open water—suggesting “that drowning-related deaths of polar bears may increase in the future if the observed trend of regression of pack ice and/or longer open water periods continues.”
The article and presentations drew national attention and helped make the polar bear something of a poster child for the global warming movement. Al Gore’s mention of the polar bear in his documentary on climate change, “An Inconvenient Truth,” came up during investigators’ questioning of Gleason in January.
In May 2008, the U.S. classified the polar bear as a threatened species, the first with its survival at risk due to global warming.
So there you have it: two researchers were flying around counting whales, and saw FOUR dead bears floating in the water. Not 4,000. Not 40,000. 4. Just four. And then assumed a cause of death for them without doing any kind of investigation. Because raging freezing storms never killed anybody, right? Or ate some bad food and died from food poisoning? Or went for a swim less than 30 minutes after eating? And from that one published assumption Al Gore made himself a propaganda movie, snagged himself a Nobel Prize, and threw the whole damn planet into a 6 year tizzy. All based on 4 dead bears found in the ocean after a major arctic storm. And a profligate species got onto the endangered list, even though local bear counts and reports by natives showed that their population was perfectly healthy and growing.
Somewhere a bunch of seals are rolling on the beach laughing their asses off, because they know the truth. Under the cover of the storm, the bears were pushed.
update: Considerably more coverage on the story here, details that show Monnett is the world’s leading drowning bears = global warming scientist, and perhaps the AGW quote of the decade:
Interview transcripts with Monnett are here and they are laughable. Really: the guy can’t remember if it was 3 bears or 4 he saw without looking at his notes. The whole bear scare was based on one observation during one transept flight (a back and forth “mowing the lawn” kind of flight used to count whales in a certain area) and the 3 (or was it 4?) dead bears seen in that small area were extrapolated to thousands more in the larger overall area. That’s junk science. It isn’t even good statistics; you can’t identify a trend based on one observation. But that was the snowball that started the whole AGW avalanche.
CBullit has a bit more, plus snooch updates.
Don’t expect Monnett to be tarred and feathered; it’s the Obama administration after all who is doing the investigation. Which means that Monnett is guaranteed to be found innocent if he happens to be black. But I don’t think he is. But I’m not holding my breath either. I expect a whitewash, or some sub-minion to get thrown under the bus.
Posted by Drew458
on 07/29/2011 at 11:26 AM
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Permalink • Friday - July 22, 2011
Scorcher
I don’t know where the thermometer is for the weather gizmo over on the right sidebar. It must be underground to be getting a mere 92° reading. Weather Channel says it’s 101° here, with a heat index of 114. My outdoor thermometer is reading 98° on the afternoon side of the house. When the sun starts hitting that patio it will heat things up to 115° or more I’m sure. And of course this is New Jersey, so the humidity is right up there with the temperature. Which means it’s a sauna outside. Looks like a good day to go to Walmart and just push a cart around for a while in the A/C.
There has to be some good way to cool off ...
update: 102° !!
But gosh, it’s becoming a “dry heat” since the relative humidity is only 41%. Which is probably about a quart per cubic foot of air at this temperature. And we should be grateful it’s so cool here: in New York City it’s 103° and in Newark it’s currently 106°. Holy cow. How did Sante Fe New Mexico get moved to New Jersey?? Dame that Al Gore and his rotten Global Warming.
updated update: 108° in Newark NJ!!
The heat wave that has melted the tri-state for the past week has broken records in New York City and New Jersey, hitting 104 degrees in Central Park by early afternoon and a sultry 108 in Newark.
The heat index was greater than 110 degrees in both New York City and Newark; 108 degrees is the hottest ever on record in New Jersey’s largest city.
It’s the seventh day of the scorching summer heat wave, and the heat is not expected to retreat until Sunday.
The previous Central Park record was 101 degrees, set in 1957.
Crivens!
Posted by Drew458
on 07/22/2011 at 11:50 AM
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