Posts Tagged ‘weather’

Arctic shot next week

Sunday, January 11th, 2009

The cold has been building in Alaska for a while now and it has mostly stayed where it is.  It looks like it will head straight down into the midwest and north east US..  We’ll probably get below zero here but the NWS isn’t forcasting that yet.  I imagine it’ll be pretty brutal just a bit north of here where there is snow cover on the ground and if it clears up at night.

I wonder if we’ll make a run at 1994′s numbers.. I still remember that well.  I was still in high school and lived with my parents in Bensalem and the temperature never made it above 10 the one day with the sun out.  I was also lucky enough to fall through ice and have about 5 blocks to walk home.  That year there was also not snow cover.

We’ll see what happens.

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If only it had been snow..

Friday, December 12th, 2008

We had a nice moisture rich  storm system move from the gulf coast up the East coast..   The system is currently causing snow and major ice in the new england states.

Here we were in the mid 50′s all day yesterday with rain and then in the evening the rain became heavy.  ended up with 2 – 3 inches of rain in the area.  My Davis vantage pro measured 2.06 inches of rain here.  This is on top of the rain from the day before.  I’m really surprised there’s not more flooding.

It looks like quite a bit of flooding going on in the area where my parrents live.  We had the warmer air in our area but They had snow west of here.. Snow in Texas, snow in New Orleans.

It’s been a pretty interesting December with some snow and plenty of cold air available to storms.

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October 28th storm

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008

Yesterday’s storm was not too bad at all for a late October storm system.  It deepened throughout the day and the wind picked up.  We  had howling winds most of the night with occasional gusts that seemed pretty strong.

We only got  rain here and most of the precipitation didn’t make it this far west but down in my mom’s area in Bensalem they had some snow.  She said none stuck to the ground but I did see a spotter report of .5 inches in Bensalem.  Her elevation is only like 50 feet or something like that..  There are some parts of  Bensalem that are a bit higher.

The big winners appear to be the higher elevations in north east PA.  I saw a few places with reports of over a foot of snow.  The highest total I saw was 17 inches in Freeland, Pa

This would have been a pretty good setup for snow during the winter.  lets hope that we have more like it!  Now the storm is pretty wound up just north of new england.

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Late October storm

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008

An October coastal storm system is developing off the mid atlantic coast.  It started yesterday with an area of rain developing and persisting through the night here in central Pa.  This would have been a nice situation for a little snow here in January.  Right now and yesterday during the afternoon the temperature held in the low 40′s

Now in the Poconos and higher elevations of northern Pa.  I wish I still had my place up near Hazleton and would be going up there.  With an elevation of 1600 feet or so and the fact that they always tended to get more snow than the surrounding areas I bet it would be a nice late fall snowfall.

It should be a cool blustery day later as the wind picks up with highs in the 40′s.

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Winter is on its way

Thursday, October 23rd, 2008

It’s always a sign of winter coming when the leaves are turning but It’s even more exciting when the NWS is starting to talk about lake effect snow.  State college is saying temperatures should support lake effect snow into tuesday after the arctic from moves through.

I’m not looking forward to the rain but arctic fronts can be fun.

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Tropical Storm Marco

Tuesday, October 7th, 2008

After the tropics got fairly quiet we now have Tropical Storm Marco in the Gulf of Mexico.  It’s not that strong but very interesting still.  It’s tiny.  The smallest storm I remember seeing and they’re saying tropical storm force winds only extend out 10 miles from the center.

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Hurricane Ike aftermath

Monday, September 15th, 2008

Hurricane Ike which was only a category 2 storm made landfall in Texas and moved  north through the Ohio valley yesterday proves that the rating doesn’t tell the whole story.  They’re saying it caused 30 billion dollars n damage and has caused at least 30 fatalities.

From what I’ve read it brought  in a  pretty high storm surge over a large area.  What really made this storm was the size of it I think.  Instead of getting stronger winds it expanded in size after hitting Cuba and looked like at one point it was affecting almost the entire Gulf of Mexico

Even after landfall it’s fast speed and taking a while to wind down brought strong winds all the way into the Great lakes states as it merged with a cold front.  It was an amazing storm to watch.

I think a lesson to learn from this storm is that it’s probably not a good idea to build on barrier islands but we’ll never learn that.  I really would never want to have my permanent house on one of these types of islands.

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Large hurricane Ike in the northern Gulf of Mexico

Thursday, September 11th, 2008

Hurricane Ike has maximum sustained winds near 100 miles per hour right now but the real story is it’s size.  It’s a big storm with hurricane force winds extending up to 115 miles from the center.   Tropical storm force winds extend up to 255 miles from the center.

The minimum pressure (945 millibars) is borderline low enough to support a category 4 storm but I imagine the size of the whole storm is keeping the gradient from being tight enough to cause the winds.

Another interesting storm for this year.

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Very nice morning thunderstorm

Tuesday, September 9th, 2008

That was a pretty good line of storms for this time in the day and year.  I don’t think it approached severe criteria in my back yard but still we had a nice very heavy wind driven rain.  It got as dark as it would be about 8:30 pm as the storms moved in.  Just before the rain started I noticed low level clouds racing across the sky from west to east.  The line heald together as it crossed the river better than any I remember of this season too.  We even had lots of lightning.

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Morning thunderstorms

Tuesday, September 9th, 2008

Today is going to be a good day. 7:40 in the morning and there appears to be some pretty strong thunderstorms moving towards us.  Not bad for September.  The other nice thing about these storms is it seems like a pretty solid area of storms so I don’t expect to be just missed by them like my area was all summer.

Some counties west of here have already had severe thunderstorm warnings due to the storms.  Radar was saying they were capable of producing quarter sized hail.

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