Not Out Like a Lamb

The end of March used to be a quiet time as winter made the transition into spring and the weather calmed down.  Not anymore.

A cold front is pushing through tomorrow and severe weather is predicted for the East Coast.  The Storm Prediction Center - which, thankfully, has not yet been emaciated by Elon Musk - was looking at the possibility of severe weather in the East as early as this past Friday, which is pretty early and thus rather ominous.  Yesterday was pretty warm, with temperatures in northern New Jersey pushing 80 degrees Fahrenheit - not the sort of temperatures you should expect in New Jersey in March.  Even late March.

The map above shows a NAM projection for 8:00 P.M. tomorrow. While it seems that the worst of the storms will hit the Washington, D.C. area, there's also a clear line of likely potent storms bearing down on the Greater New York area from northwestern New Jersey.  This March will not go out quietly . . . though the power outages this storm front may cause might silence millions. 

Distant Early Warning

Today is Sunday, and it's the holiday season, and so much is going on . . . so I'm not going to say too much today.  I just want to call attention to the unprecedented clusters of tornadoes that ran through the middle of the country in the past couple of days.

One devastating tornado blew through Kentucky for over two hundred miles, which is slightly less than the equivalent of the distance between New York and Boston.  It laid waste to the town of Mayfield in the western part of the state, virtually wiping it off the map.  Over a hundred people are feared dead.

Storms like this aren't supposed to happen in December, and even if tornadoes of this nature are more common at Easter time than Christmas time, tornadoes aren't normally known for traversing as much territory as this one did.  It should drive the point home that climate change is real.  And though hurricanes and tropical storms mostly stayed away from my region this year, the remnants of Ida were so bad that if the remnants - the remnants! - could do as much damage in New Jersey as they did, you only need to look at Louisiana to see how what the actual storm was like!   

Oh yeah, about a month ago, New Jersey had a cold front that was more potent than the one the blew through last night, and it generated some pretty intense weather for the fall season.  We keep getting warned by Mother Nature herself that climate change is real, and yet not enough people seem to be ready to do anything about it. 

Pronounced "ees-uh-EE-us"

Well, well, it looks like another tropical system is coming my way!

Hurricane Isaias, the earliest I-named storm on record, formed last week and is now working its way up the Florida Atlantic coast, and it's eventually going too get to my neck of the woods.  I'm not as worried about this storm as I was only yesterday.  For one thing, it's expected to revert back to a tropical storm before it gets up to the Delmarva Peninsula.  Also, it will have 50-mile-per-hour winds, the same intensity as Tropical Storm Fay. So I'm not worrying about the wind so much.  But we might get more than a little rain - maybe four inches' worth!

I'm actually more worried about today's weather, as the local forecasters are not only calling for severe thunderstorms - again - but also suggesting, thanks to all of the tropical moisture, that there could even be a tornado!

I might already be experiencing a power or cable outage by the time you read this.

While Isaias might not be the big deal for New Jersey that it started out to be, it's important to remember that the Atlantic hurricane season has a long way to go before it's over, and a big one - Category 3 or higher - is always possible.  And so the Northeast could very well get the hurricane that the almanacs predicted for this fall.

I can't wait until 2020 is over, although I don't know why, because who's to say 2021 is going to be better? 

Armageddon In New Jersey

On the surface, anyway, the weather in New Jersey this year has been like it always was before. We had cold and snow in the winter, a mild and fertile weather pattern in the spring, and heat and sun in the summer, and not too many brutal heat waves.

Except that we've had a severe-thunderstorm threat once a week for the past five or six weeks.  And a lot of those threats have proven true.

And it's even worse than that. The Washington Post recently reported that, as a result of climate change, New Jersey is warming faster than any other state in the contiguous forty-weight states except Rhode Island.  Insects that should die off in cold winters are surviving and causing problems with the ecosystem.  Winters are so much warmer that Lake Hopatcong, the state's largest lake, freezes less often and less solidly, making the ice too thin to stage winter carnivals like the ones that were popular there a hundred years ago. And toxic algae blooms in that same lake has forced the closing of beaches there and made the lake off limits to boaters.

Me, I'm beginning to see climate change in my lawn!  I'm seeing weeds I've never seen grow in grass before, and even worse, I'm seeing weeds that I've never seen before anywhere!   

My advice?  Deal with it.  Because if reversing or limiting the impact of climate change means Americans changing their behavior, it ain't gonna happen.  I don't need to see Jay Inslee's presidential poll numbers to figure that out.  You see, one of my neighbors has apparently just bought this humongous Ford pickup truck . . . 

Did I happen there's another severe-thunderstorm threat in New Jersey today?

MORE STORMS?

My neighborhood has had at least one severe thunderstorm every week for the past three weeks, and last week we had two - and the second one wasn't supposed to materialize.  Tomorrow (Tuesday), my neighborhood will likely get another severe storm.

And each storm feels like it's been worse than the one preceding it.

See that big red blob of intense rain over northern New Jersey in the NAM 3km projection, for 3:00 PM Eastern time tomorrow, above? That's where I live. 

These storms have left me frazzled, and one more severe storm could send me over the edge. A dead tree up against the wires on my street - :-O - might be sent over the edge. It's not the lightning so much that has been a problem with these storms, but the mile-a-minute wind gusts the come with hem. Even if the overall wind is about five miles an hour or so, one gusty thunderstorm could increase the wind speed tenfold. And that's not to mention the flash flooding.

I won't be here tomorrow; I've already decided on that.  Assuming I still have power, I hope to be back on Wednesday. 

Stormy

Nothing to do with Stephanie Clifford.

Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court is in greater jeopardy after a second woman, one Debbie Ramirez, claims to have been sexually harassed by Kavanaugh while they were both at Yale, at a dorm.  He apparently flashed her.  Kavanaugh may only have two allegations against him as opposed to dozens (I wonder if you all know who I'm talking about?), but two allegations may indeed be two too many when you're talking about a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land.  (I'm not referring to the Lake County Courthouse in Leadville, Colorado, perched at an altitude of 10,145 feet above sea level.)  This could blow up big time.

Rod Rosenstein went to the White House after allegations were made  that he suggested involving the 25th Amendment too remove Donald Trump from office for being an idiot.  Rosenstein, who's no idiot himself, denies the charges and said he was being sarcastic in talking to then-acting FBI director Andrew McCabe.  Apparently Trump and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly didn't think he was being very funny, because he got a dressing-down at the White House yesterday and has been told to return to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue when Trump returns from the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Thursday.  A big-time blow-up, given the precarious state of the Russia investigation that Rosenstein oversees as Deputy Attorney General, is inevitable.

And if you think that's explosive, wait until Trump addresses the United Nations General Assembly today.  We could be in a war with Iran before long. :-O

Meanwhile, a strong cold front running into warm, humid air across the Northeast tomorrow could produce storms so severe, I could once again lose my electricity for I don't know how long . . . and end up with a tree in my living room.

Thursday's weather is supposed to be much better. :-p

Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a (very) bumpy ride!         

Rain, Rain, Go Away!

August has been an impossibly rainy month in my area so far, with flooding so bad even indoor events are getting rained out.

How bad is it?  As I reported here back in 2013, the undevelopable wooded lot in my neighborhood with a brook running down the middle of it was taken over by the neighborhood and developed into a sitting park with flower gardens and a bench and called Waverly Park after an adjacent street (Waverly Place).  I'd hoped to take some pictures of it after having helped get it into shape this year.

Unfortunately, these aren't the sort of pictures I had planned to take.

This is the park viewed from the south after a flash flood hit it on Saturday, August 11 (yesterday).

Here is is again, viewed from the west.

I have never seen it this bad before.  A rain storm in my area usually means that this brook becomes a whitewater rapid.  But not a lake!

The streets adjacent to the park were not affected, and when I went by later in the evening, the flood waters had receded to the point where the bench was accessible.  By the morning, the flood had completely subsided. Fortunately, none of the gardens we planted this year were flooded out.  But there was still foam on the water where the brook enters the culvert under the bench.

Twenty eighteen is turning out to be some year, isn't it?  Four winter nor'easters in as many weeks, a derecho in May knocking out my power for seven hours and change, now this!  And in the outside world there are fires in California and in Sweden above the Arctic Circle while the Iberian peninsula bakes in 116-Fahrenheit-degree heat.  

I tried to stop talking about the weather on my blog for the past few months, but I couldn't contain myself any longer.  Neither can the brook in our neighborhood contain itself.  And the only nation on the planet to razz the Paris Agreement on climate change can expect more of the same from sea to polluted sea.

Did I happen to mention that more flash flooding is possible tomorrow? 

Derecho De Mayo?

A derecho-type line of severe thunderstorms ripped through - and ripped out - a good chunk of Maryland and Virginia yesterday, and another, similar line of thunderstorms is expected to tear through New Jersey, as the merriless month of May 2018 continues.  This lousy weather has forced me to cancel plans already, and it may end up canceling my electrical and/or cable service for I don't know how long. 

Stay tuned . . . I may be back.