Good morning from chilly Santa Fe, NM, where I read the NWS forecast before I get out of bed each day.
Got into this habit after we retired from Austin to Galveston Bay and got hit by Rita. Since then have religiously watched the weather and also check out Wunderblog for tropical weather news since we still have friends and family down in the Upper Texas Coast area. Loved it down there but decided did not want to deal with all the extra maintenance and storms.
FWIW Jeff Masters is saying this morning:
Sandy: a potential billion-dollar storm for the mid-Atlantic, New England, and Canada
The latest set of 12Z (8 am EDT) model runs are in, and they portray an increased risk to the U.S. and Canadian East Coasts for early next week. The GFS model, which had been showing that Sandy would head to the northeast out to sea, now has changed its tune, and predicts that Sandy will double back and hit Maine on Tuesday evening. The ECMWF model, which has been very consistent in its handling of Sandy, now has the storm hitting Delaware on Monday afternoon. These models are predicting that Sandy will get caught up by the trough approaching the Eastern U.S., which will inject a large amount of energy into the storm, converting it to a powerful subtropical storm with a central pressure below 960 mb and sustained winds of 60 - 70 mph. Winds of this strength would likely cause massive power outages, as trees still in leaf take out power lines. Also of great concern are Sandy's rains. Given that ocean temperatures along the Northeast U.S. coast are about 5°F above average, there will be an unusually large amount of water vapor available to make heavy rain. If the trough of low pressure approaching the East Coast taps into the large reservoir of cold air over Canada and pulls down a significant amount of Arctic air, as predicted, the potential exists for the unusually moist air from Sandy to collide with this cold air from Canada and unleash the heaviest October rains ever recorded in the Northeast U.S. Another huge concern is storm surge flooding. Sandy is expected to have tropical storm-force winds that extend out more than 300 miles from the center, which will drive a much larger storm surge than its winds would ordinarily suggest. The full moon is on Monday, which means astronomical tides will be at their peak for the month, increasing potential storm surge flooding.
There remains a lot of model uncertainty on where Sandy might go, and I still give a 30% chance that the storm will have a minimal impact on the U.S. An extra set of balloon-borne radiosondes is going to be launched at 2 pm EDT on Thursday all across the U.S., which should help tomorrow evening's model runs make better forecasts of where Sandy might go. Extra radiosondes will be launched every 6 hours through Saturday afternoon.
The potential for wild weather is so much greater today than it was when we retired in 2004. As I wrote in my diary yesterday still feeling bad that President Obama did not mention
a vision for dealing with climate change during the debate. Nov. 7 we should all continue the push !
Of course the hurricane may not hit the US at all, but as we learned during our few years down on the TX coast the prep can mean a matter off life or death.
Here's a link for info from our socialist National Weather Service:
Hurricane Preparedness - Be Ready
Stay safe!
Namaste.
7:24 AM PT: GOTV!! From the comments: Vote early, among other weather prep. (1+ / 0-)
A Yahoo News (ugh, I know) story talks about power outages possibly lasting through Election Day. Voting early would at least remove that concern.
by jenesq on Thu Oct 25, 2012 at 08:16:34 AM MDT