Let's Go, Landon?

No, the title is not a reference to a Republican presidential campaign slogan from 1936.  Landon is the name that The Weather Channel has given to the winter storm for this week.  And the reason I'm bringing up the weather again is that I may have to worry about an ice storm in my neck of the woods.

As the CNN map above shows, there will be a band of ice and sleet between snow on one side of a cold front and rain on the other side.  And the line is going to cross New Jersey over the course of the day on Friday, but right now no one seems to know for certain whether my area will get mostly rain, mostly ice, or mostly a wintry mix - though the third option is the likeliest one. But the Global Forecast System (GFS) pretty much has an ice storm on tap for my area, with a good deal of sleet and snow to follow, while the European, Canadian and NAM computer projections back a more rainy scenario with some mixed precipitation at the end.

The only good thing about all this is that the GFS is clearly the outlier for now, but the other projections could just easily align themselves with what it's spewing out.  And it was consistent in all four of its runs yesterday.  The odds favor the Euro and the Canadian because what the GFS is projecting isn't supposed to happen in my area.  We will see.      

COVID On Ice - The Sequel

I thought New Jersey would be spared.

It's been a tough winter owing to the weather as much as the pandemic, but when forecast projections backed off on widespread icing for the northern part of the state, I felt a little more confident about the next winter storm taking aim at us tomorrow night into Tuesday.  Not so much now.  The northwestern part of New Jersey is under an ice storm warning, and even though the I live in a county that is merely under a winter weather advisory, the extent of the zone under a storm warning isn't too far from my exact location on the map.

So now I'm back to worrying about the power going out for the first time this year and maybe for 65th or 66th time (I lost the exact count long ago) since November 2009.  I may get off easy this time, since the worst ice will be farther north and west, but I don't expect my house to have power for a full twelve-month period (the last time the power went off was for a few moments in August due to Tropical l Storm Isaias).  I haven't had an outage free-year since this rash of outages started.  In fact, the power in my house flickered three times one night last week, despite the absence of inclement weather.   

However, I do expect to get my COVID vaccine by some time this summer, about the same time a hurricane hits this area.

I may be back soon . . ..