Posts Tagged ‘weather’

Tropical Storm Hanna makes landfall

Saturday, September 6th, 2008

Tropical storm Hanna moved into the Carolinas last night and north, then northeast through Virginia and is now off the coast.  It dumped heavy rains in some areas and in my back yard we received heavier rainfall than I had expected.  I figure that was going to happen when I saw the radar this morning and felt the  humidity.  Dew point of 72 or 73 today made it feel like summer and not September.

My Davis vantage pro2 recorded 2.19 inches today.  I noticed that Lancaster county’s stormnet website shows most areas getting 2 to almost 5 inches of rain.  So much for me not having to cut the grass anymore this year.. It’s been so dry it hasn’t grown.

It’s been breezy since about 2 but the wind hasn’t been strong.  State college dropped the wind advisory too.   I haven’t heard of any damage or flooding really either.

This situation could have been worse I think if the moisture from Gustav had combined with the moisture from  Hanna.

In the Atlantic Hurricane Ike is back up to 135 miles per hour making it a category four.  This one will be a fun storm to track.

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Hanna approaching the Carolinas

Friday, September 5th, 2008

Tropical storm Hanna is approaching the East coast of the United states now with maximum sustained winds near 70 mph.  It seems like there is a lot more convection today than there was yesterday but still not around the center.  The minimum pressure is 980 millibars which seems a bit low to not be a hurricane but that depends on other factors too.

It will make landfall in the Carolinas and move up the east coast and turn northeast.  Hopefully some time in my life time I will have the opportunity to experience a tropical storm or hurricane from the coast.

It would be really fun to be on the outer banks this weekend.  I am really hoping we don’t get too much rain here though.  I want to do other things this weekend.  On the plus side we do need the rain and the storm will be moving pretty fast.

Hurricane Ike is still going strong although it has weakened somewhat.  It’s still a category three storm and looks like it may strengthen a bit.  The track appears to want to brush south Florida but that’s still five days from now.

Tropical storm Josephine has really weakened and there doesn’t seem to be much convection left that that storm.  Josephine is forecast to weaken and turn towards the northwest over the next few days.

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Hurricane Gustav strengthening

Saturday, August 30th, 2008

Hurricane Gustav has rapidly strengthened over nigh and now has maximum sustained winds of 120 miles per hour.    It also appears to have grown in size and is now a large storm.  It looks pretty good this morning.

It should cross Cuba which  will hopefully weaken the storm quite a bit.  Gustav should then make landfall in Louisiana but being such a large storm the effects will be pretty widespread.  Will definitely be a fun weekend to watch  it.

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Tropical storms Hanna and Gustav

Friday, August 29th, 2008

The tropics sure got active now..  In the Caribbean Sea there is tropical storm  Gustav.  It made another landfall today on Jamaica.  It doesn’t really look that   impressive but is forecast to go between Cuba and the Yucatan Peninsula and strengthen  over the warm water.  We’ll see how it holds together.  It seems to like land so far.

We also have Tropical storm Hanna north east of the Leeward Islands.  Again it doesn’t look all that impressive but does seem to have a burst of colder cloud tops now meaning that it has better convection.  It’ll be a little while before this one effects any land masses.

It would be kind of interesting to see these two storms strong enough and close enough together to have the fujiwhara effect.  At the same time they could cause damage and cost people there lives so I don’t really want to see that happen.

There is also an area of convection off of Mexico that they are keeping an eye on.

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Hurricane Gustav

Tuesday, August 26th, 2008

The tropical depression I mentioned yesterday has become hurricane Gustav.  That was fast.    Right now it is forecast to stay along the southern edge of Cuba which will keep the rain away from the southeast US.  It is forecast to become a strong hurricane and move into the gulf of Mexico.  I guess that will bring oil prices up.  We’ll see what happens.

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tropical storm Fay brought heavy rains to south east

Monday, August 25th, 2008

Tropical storm Fay was pretty interesting to watch even thought it never got that strong.  It just moved so slow that it dumped flooding rains with lots of reports of high rainfall totals.  The that grabbed me was the spotter report of 27.5 inches of rain.  There were lots of reports of 15 to 20 inches in Florida too.  I would think the lucky thing is that the storm didn’t stall or move very slowly over mountainous terrain.

The storm held onto it’s organization pretty well while pretty much drifting over Florida.  That surprised me and was pretty interesting since the center wasn’t over it’s fuel source.

Now there’s a another tropical depression that looks like it should move north west over Cuba.  IF that goes over Florida or the south east US it could make for another mess down there.

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Chilly August night

Wednesday, August 20th, 2008

The cold front came through and made for a nice cool night last night.  Actually this morning it felt a bit chilly out side.  We had a low of 51.4 according to my Davis vantage pro2.  I was hoping to make the 40′s but didn’t quite make it. This is my favorite part about August.  It’s when we start getting the first cool crisp nights of the year.

It won’t be too much longer until we are getting our first frost of the year.  Not to far off from that I’ll be hoping for snow only to be disappointed to have rain instead.

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nearly stationary thunderstorms

Tuesday, July 8th, 2008

Yesterday was a very humid day and pretty warm too. It featured small thunderstorms popping up all day long but completely missing us. Most of the day they seemed to be focused along the Susquehanna river. They were pretty much stationary but drifting slightly with a south to north component. They almost seemed to be forming along the hills on the river.

By suppertime I had written off any rain for us because the last i had looked at the radar they were weakening. After supper I came up stairs thinking to check my email. As the computer was booting I heard fairly close thunder so shut it right back down.

By the time it shut down I went out side. It was very dark here with bright skies to the north. The dark clouds above us looked low and had that bit of a boiling look to them. By now the lightning was pretty frequent just to out south and south west. and we were getting very heavy rain. for maybe 10 minutes. The rain let up with just a little sporadic drizzle now.

There were lots of random smallish dark clouds in the sky moving in different directions. Now there was a breeze that kept switching directions but seemed the strongest from the west. The clouds rapidly gathered to the north east and after a couple of minutes of that there started to be flashes of lightning off in that area.

The rain let up so we decided to run to the gas station so Molly didn’t have to do that this morning on her way to work.

While getting gas the clouds were rapidly spreading from the North east and the west. On the way home it started to pour with large drops of rain. The rain came down so hard it couldn’t even run off of our front yard fast enough. It just looked like a big puddle.

After that let up the temperatures here were in the upper 60′s with a dewpoint of 66. Not too bad and that made for a good night sleeping sans air conditioning.

I know the NWS had issued a flash flood warning because of radar estimating six inches of rain in two hours. That wouldn’t suprise me at all. We probably had less than a half an hour of rain total and my vantage pro measured .64 or something like that. We were on the edge of the storms and seemed like a few areas were constantly under them.

These storms were no where near severe but it was just cool to watch the life cycle of the storms and besides that it was nice to not get missed completely for a change. Looking at radar afterwords they seemed to have developed along route 30. I wonder if Chickies ridge was just enough to help them develop in t

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April 11th thunderstorms

Saturday, April 12th, 2008

Last night was a pretty interesting night for weather. We had a couple of thunderstorms before I went to bed. Nothing major or anything but a surprising amount of lightning for this time of the year. I guess a high in the low 70′s will help with that. It did seem as though the storms may have been strengthening as they moved east.

When that was over i went to sleep and got woken up 4:30 am by thunder again. Pretty impressive lightning and thunder again occurred with that storm too. I went outside to watch it but unfortunately by the time I got out there the storm was moving away. I found out later that it was moving at 50mph. There was a nice cool breeze with this one.

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weekend storm

Tuesday, March 11th, 2008

Last weekends storm didn’t give us as much rain as promised but it did rain some.  Saturday afternoon the low seemed to start to intensify more rapidly just as it crossed central Pa.  We’d gone to eat at Red Robin’s in Hershey and when we came out it was sunny and clear except for a line of clouds to the south west.  By the time we got home the clouds were moving in.

One the storms moved in we got some insane wind gusts but the cool thing was to hear the sounds.  It was almost like hearing stronger winds above.  We got very heavy rain for a few minutes and wind blown hail.

Lots of tree damage in the county and power outages too.  None in my neighborhood but we went to Leola and saw roofing materials on the ground and saw ppl trucks near Chickies Rock park Sunday evening.  Two of them working across the street from each other..

After the storms passed here they really seemed to form a solid bow echo.  Seemed like it weakened on radar by the time it reached Bucks county but judging by the stats on my brother’s tree service website they got hit pretty hard.  My mom said it wasn’t bad at her house but she said there was a lot going on in the area judging by the scanner.

It was definitely a time when I wish I had my Davis vantage Pro’s wind sensor set up properly. I recorded a 29.12 low pressure here.

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