In With a Leonine Storm

I thought we'd been spared. Although a line of severe thunderstorms came through my area this past Saturday - the result of abnormally warm weather meeting seasonably cold air coming in from the west (producing summerlike storms in February for the second year in a row!), my immediate area didn't get the worst of it, and I thought that would be it for awhile.  But no, we've gotten more warm air pumped into our area, and another cold front is bearing down on us for today, the first day of March . . . and the threat for my immediate vicinity may be even greater this time. :-O

This is the map issued late yesterday showing the risk areas for severe thunderstorms in the lower forty-eight.  As you can see, New Jersey is in the "slight risk" zone, which means there's far more than a slight chance that we're going to get pummeled - especially when the forecast squall line is expected to push southeast rather than northeast like the one from Saturday.  The map issued the day before showed northern New Jersey in the "marginal" risk zone; the entire state, for all I know, could be in an "enhanced risk" zone by the time you read this.     

I have a feeling we're going to get an electrical blackout for an undetermined duration, or at least a cable blackout, so I may be out of commission for awhile.  Utility companies have bragged in recent years about how their infrastructural systems has been hardened to the point where they can withstand the sort of damaging winds and torrential downpours that this sort of severe weather can bring.  But trees are no stronger than they've always been, of course, and no electrical or cable wire strung from one pressure-treated utility pole to the other can withstand a tree brought down by a wind gust.

Neither can a living room window.

And if there is cloud-to-ground lightning, all bets are off.

I may be back later.  Suffice to say, we shouldn't be getting July-like storms in March.  We shouldn't even be getting the sort of storms we got last July; climate change has only made them more fierce.