Not Out Like a Lamb

March isn't going quietly this year.  We have yet another rainstorm in the Northeast that could give us a real soaking today. 

And come Thursday morning - April 1, though it's not an April Fool joke - we could get a bit of snow.  Not much, but just enough to make us groan.

But that's nothing in light of the fact that my area could get yet another wind advisory - the fourth or fifth one since the start of March.  And Friday - Good Friday - could feel like just that - the start of March, with a nasty chill in the air.

I'm getting sick of all of this.

There is a bright side - literally.  It gets warmer and sunnier on Holy Saturday, with even nicer weather for Easter Sunday and immediately after.   No more wintry weather any time soon after that.  I can't wait.

Snow and Ice and Rain . . .

The Northeast is about to get its first big snowfall of the meteorological winter of 2019-20. . . on the first day, tomorrow (December 1).  And if that weren't bad enough, sleet and freezing rain are in the mix.  

Right now, my area may not get the worst of the snow, but ice accretion is still a concern.  As I type this, there's a worst-case scenario for my area with regard to ice, but hopefully it will be more sleet (frozen ice pellets, less treacherous) than freezing rain (rain freezes on contact, ice weighs down branches and power lines, no one wants that to happen!).  Not all of the rain we get will freeze, though.  However, I feel frustrated, because I haven't finished raking the autumn leaves, and now I have to worry about a winter storm.

I'd move to southern California, but I'd rather deal with a thousand snowstorms (but no ice storms) than a single firestorm.

Not feeling very inspired right now. Sorry . . .   

April (Thunder)Showers

I'll get to the Mueller report release later.  But now, the weather.

This past weekend, my area of New Jersey was under a "slight" risk for severe thunderstorms, which is actually pretty serious for New Jersey.  When I went to bed late Sunday night, there were no severe-weather watches.  That night, I woke up with a pain in my arm; it was two in the morning. I got up, took some aspirin, and checked the latest weather watch.

That's when I saw the tornado watch for all of New Jersey.

We didn't get a tornado that night, but we did get a thunderstorm that was as severe as Catherine Deneuve is beautiful.  Yes . . . that severe.  It woke me up at 4:25 A.M.  The lightning, wind and rain were so intense that I was certain the night light across the hall and the digital clock in my bedroom would go out any moment .  Miraculously, the power stayed on, and the storm lasted only twenty minutes.  I was glad that it was over so soon.

Except that it wasn't.

A new storm system the like one last weekend is affecting the same areas of the country that were affected by the last storm.  That means more tornadoes in the South, more bow-line supercells in the Southeast, and more thunderstorms along the East Coast.  The Storm  Prediction Center, as of this writing, has most of New Jersey in a marginal-risk zone for severe weather, with far northern New Jersey in a regular-thunderstorm zone.

This time yesterday, the marginal-risk zone was farther south.  Tomorrow, the Storm Prediction Center might very well include all of New Jersey in a risk zone, with part of the state in a slight-risk zone.

But at least we won't get really bad storms like the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida, right?  Well, even a marginal-risk zone can leave room for storms like the one that hit us last weekend.  The forecast for my area calls for the chance of "locally damaging wind gusts" (read downed tree limbs and power lines) and, of course. heavy rain (a flash flood watch is already out for northern New Jersey). 

Climate change is making me fall out of love with spring.  April and May used to mean benign, mild weather in which to enjoy the tulips and the flowering trees, brought to you by soft showers.  Now spring is just as treacherous as the heart of summer (which promises to be hellishly hot on the East Coast this year). The derecho we had last May (which I still haven't recovered from psychologically) is still very fresh in my mind; I'm more than convinced that we could deal with another weather "event" like that very soon.  But I didn't think I'd ever have to deal with severe, power-threatening weather during the Easter season.

We'd better get used to this, as I have absolutely no confidence in anyone - least of all Americans - to do something about climate change. 

I may be back. 

Beware of Maya

The winter storm The Weather Channel has named for the Hindi word for "illusion" is no illusion, it's the real thing.  It's bringing snow, ice and rain to my area tomorrow after having wreaked havoc elsewhere, and even though the ice my area is expected to get is more likely to be sleet - rain that freezes in midair - than rain that freezes the moment it comes into contact with whatever it touches, like tree limbs and power lines, it's still going to be a nasty storm for us.  So, even though it won't be a bona fide ice storm, a 49th power outage for my block, counting from November 2009, can't be ruled out entirely.

I've had an easy winter, and the idea that would remain easy was just an illusion; this is Mother Nature's way of having everything turn out even, especially after it was over sixty degrees Fahrenheit  early last week.

Stick around. I may be back soon.

Snow and Ice and Rain, Oh My!

As you've probably been hearing all week, a dangerous winter storm bringing every form of precipitation known to humankind has been marching across the 48 contiguous United States.  The storm, which The Weather Channel inexplicably decided to name after Paul Simon's eldest son (weather forecasters who don't work for The Weather Channel don't name winter storms, and they go  to great lengths not to use the names The Weather Channel assigns to them), is bringing snow, rain,. sleet, and freezing rain to just about anywhere. California got hit with rain and snow already.  The Great Plains have been walloped with snow and the Midwest has gotten snow and ice as well.  In the Northeast, we've been awaiting our turn, which is coming some time after I publish this. 

Ice has been the main concern for my immediate area, with threats of significant icing in parts of New Jersey north and west of New York City.  Icing occurs when warm air aloft causes snow to melt into raindrops over frozen ground and then refreeze on contact - freezing rain.  That's different from sleet, where melted snow refreezes into pellets before it hits the ground.  Earlier forecasts for my area called for snow to change to rain and for ground-level temperatures to be cold enough to allow rain to freeze on the ground and create ice heavy enough to bring down trees . . . and power lines.  This in an area where I have had to endure no fewer than 48 outages in the past decade.  At this writing, however, more recent forecasts call for snow to change to rain where I live and not freeze on the ground, as temperatures will be rising through the night and in the overnight hours.  So I think my neighborhood will be spared icing.    

I think we will be spared icing because after the precipitation ends by midday tomorrow, the temperature will start to fall, falling to 32 degrees Fahrenheit around 3 P.M., falling to about 24 after sunset, falling to 13 by midnight and finally bottoming out at 6 at 9 A.M. Monday.  And another forecast says that freezing rain in my area is still a possibility for tonight.  But the falling temperatures throughout Sunday afternoon and evening are the primary concerns here, because they will cause a flash freezing of any collected water that hasn't evaporated from the winds, which will also be picking up.  High wind speed plus freezing water on power lines and trees equal disaster.  

While I'm a little more confident than I was yesterday that my block will be speared a power outage, I'm not taking any chances as far as my blogs are concerned.  I have written a blog entry and scheduled it to be published on Tuesday, January 22, but I don't expect to write anything else here if a blackout occurs.  Maybe not even if a blackout doesn't occur; I have other and more important things to do online this coming week.  Also, I have rescheduled posts on my beautiful-women picture blog so that, after a post today,  there will not be a new post there until Friday.

As for my non-online life, I have plans to encase food in Styrofoam boxes and store them in a cold place if my power does go out, and I may have to leave the water running to prevent freezing pipes.  But whatever happens, it's actually supposed to get up to the mid-forties by Wednesday.

I hope to be back in a timely matter.  Stay tuned.     

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? 

In Like a Lion . . . Again

The weather will be rocking and rolling in my neck of the woods to start off March.  The American Northeast is about to be subject to a nor'easter, and not only has confidence been growing in the forecasts for a big storm, predictions for how bad it will be have progressively worsened.  After a hopeful sign that the storm, expected to begin tomorrow night and produce two inches of rain, could be gone by late Friday, it is now expected to linger into Saturday morning.  And after early signs that the winds would be at a manageable 20 to 25 miles an hour, they could now be as high as 35 mph, and that's just inland - not at the coast, where winds could be higher still and cause flooding at high tide under a full moon.  And oh yes, the heavy rain could turn to snow just before it tapers off.

We're going to get everything.

And how will this affect my electricity, which has gone out over forty times in the past ten years?  I don't know yet, but right now I'm cautiously optimistic, because it could be worse.  Tempering that hope, of course, is the fact that the forecast has been getting worse.  As always, stay tuned - I may be back.  

Wild Winter Weather

It was somewhat mild yesterday, but it's be warmer with rain today, followed by a mild springlike day tomorrow in advance of . . . three to six inches of snow tomorrow night into Thursday??

What is this, March?

Well, no, it's February, and you don't normally see winter get this volatile this early, and the thought of snow later this week wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that this is expected to be heavy wet snow that could fall at an inch or two an hour. It's not supposed to be a nor'easter, and it should be out of the way quickly, but the nature and rapidity of the snowfall could be as bad as any long blizzard.

The first half of winter is over, but the second half could get more, uh, interesting.  After a brief cold snap, we could get rain this coming weekend.  Some long-range forecasts show a major rainstorm bringing in March like a lion around the first weekend of the month.  

And Donald Trump doesn't believe in climate change.

Meanwhile, French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron, well aware of Trump's ignorance of the subject, says that, if elected, he will encourage American scientists and renewable-energy entrepreneurs to move to France and continue their work without fear of being undermined.  It looks like America could be on the wrong end of a brain drain that benefits the French.  Only it's not going to be jazz singers and actors we're losing to France this time.      

Because the Wind Is High (and Rain Too) . . .

Here we go again.

An historic storm is forecast to affect all of New Jersey today, and my area is expected to see an inch of rain plus winds averaging 25 miles an hour with gusts above 40 miles an hour.  My area is under in a wind advisory, but just a few miles away in New York City, there's a high wind warning for even stronger sustained winds and gusts.  And - you guessed it - power outages are a possibility everywhere, which for us would be Outage Number 39 since November 2009 (after two brief ones this past November), as well as the first of the new year.  

Art this point, I'm tired of it.

Let's see what happens.  Stay tuned . . . I may be back.  

An Ice Weekend?

We just got a few inches of snow where I live.  In the meantime, I've seen some weather reports indicating rain and freezing rain for the Martin Luther King holiday coming up next weekend . . . specifically, next Sunday night into Monday morning.  It's expected to be light - so far - and it should hopefully warm up to the point where it's only plain rain.  But this forecast is still a week out.  An ice storm isn't out ofthe question.  Remember, a week before Hurricane Sandy, that storm was excepted to miss us entirely.  

So now I wait to see if we in fact will experience our first electrical outage of 2017, or whether we get through it and still hold out hope for our first outage-free calendar year since 2008 (yeah, right).  Also, even if we do escape ice next weekend, there's another threat coming late next week.

Why do I still write about possible ice storms despite the fact that they never seem to materialize?  I figure that if I keep writing about it, then nothing will happen.  Hey, it's worked so far!

In the meantime, this week is supposed to be warm after a bitterly cold start.   

Winter: So Far, So Good

It was fairly warm in the American Northeast today, and it's been mild overall this January. Don't tell me there's no climate change! Seattle had a devastating snowstorm earlier this month, the very kind of storm New York is used to seeing in the winter. We in the Greater New York area have been getting mostly rain, the same kind of winter weather you normally see in . . . Seattle. (Alas, New York hasn't adopted Seattle's grunge rock culture, but that's another post.)

The only snow we Tristaters have gotten this winter so far is the snowfall of last Saturday (January 21), which barely amounted to three inches and melted within almost as many days. So far we've had a manageable winter in the Greater New York area, and while I hope it continues to work out that way, I know the weather could turn nasty and cold any time now.

Meanwhile, the forecast around her calls for temperatures in the mid-forties for the coming week. I'll take it.

Unsettled Spring Weather

We're getting something in the American Northeast that's been quite rare recently . . . a nice day!

April is associated with rain, of course, and it appears that the Northeast - northern New Jersey especially - has been getting a lot of it. It's also been chillier than usual, making outdoor activities even more difficult. Even today, with temperatures in the low 60s forecast, has a lot of wind. After a cloudy day tomorrow, there's a chance of more rain in the following four days. The Passaic River in northern New Jersey can't take much more.

And even though the flowering trees are blooming, as are the tulips and the daffodils, it's hard to think springlike thoughts when you're still wearing your winter coat half the time. I'm kind of glad I won't be taking part in the annual New York five-borough bicycle ride. Circumstances involving time and good weather (or lack of both thereof) have been such that I haven't ridden my bike once this season so far.

Many people don't think spring really begins until Easter arrives. This year it arrives on the second latest date possible, with the season already a third over. Well, once Easter arrives, maybe we'll see more springlike weather follow.

Better days are ahead . . ..

False Weather Alarm

So it didn't snow yesterday where I live after all. No, I'll qualify that. It did snow a bit around eleven o'clock in the morning or so, but nothing stuck. It was mostly a cold rain.

So what happened? Well, the forecast was no April Fool's joke. As the nor'easter got closer it looked like it would dump snow in northern New Jersey, but as the track of the storm became clearer and as the forecasts were revised, it became obvious that it wouldn't amount to much if anything for most of us. The winter storm warning for Morris County was downgraded to a winter weather advisory, and the winter weather advisory for Essex County was canceled Thursday night.

So much of New Jersey dodged a bullet. The heaviest snow from this April storm fell in Massachusetts and Maine. The center of Massachusetts was hit fairly hard. But here the storm wimped out. Today has been very pleasant.

New Jersey isn't out of the woods yet. Some thundershowers and wind storms are moving across the country and are expected to hit New Jersey Tuesday morning. Welcome to April, the cruelest month.

The Mother Of All Storms

I can't remember a winter storm being this bad. The nor'easter that hit the greater New York area this past weekend didn't produce any snow, and there was no winter storm warning, but it was still a winter storm (spring hasn't officially begun yet), a storm full of howling wind and driving rain, and it was a doozy. The storm left over 300,000 houses without power, my house included. But that's just part of the story. My cable service went out. That meant no telephone service, no television, and no Internet connection. The power was only off for five hours - some people are still experiencing outages as I type - but my cable outage lasted nineteen hours. The service finally came back on at 11:00 PM last night.

Then, overnight, it went out again.

And now? I'm typing this blog entry from a computer in my local library. You can guess the rest.

How long will I be without any form of communication at home? Speaking of guessing, I can only guess that, too.

I can't wait until spring.