Weather Bug

Monday, December 27, 2010

NOON EST, December 27, 2010

Posted by ILIAS at 12:12 PM

Eastern Blizzard Producing Impressive Numbers

By WeatherBug Meteorologist

Related Content

The ongoing blizzard roaring up the East Coast and blasting the Northeast has already generated impressive snowfall accumulations since early Sunday from the Mid-Atlantic into New England.
Below is just a snapshot of the preliminary numbers WeatherBug is receiving from local media, the National Weather Service and WeatherBug`s Live Tracking Stations:
Power Outage:
WeatherBug estimates show nearly 107,000 customers without power this morning from Maryland to Massachusetts. Hardest hit is eastern Massachusetts, where National Grid was reporting nearly 30,000 outages. The outage numbers are dropping.
Snowfall:
Massachusetts:

Saugus: 19.2 inches
Taunton: 16.7 inches
East Boston: 16.5 inches
Mansfield: 16.5 inches
Brockton: 16.0 inches
Norwood: 13.5 inches
Dighton: 13.1 inches

Rhode Island:

West Warwick: 12.0 inches
Woonsocket: 12.0 inches
Warren: 9.0 inches

Connecticut:

Wilton: 18.0 inches
Greenwich: 17.0 inches
Norwalk: 16.0 inches

New York:

Great Kills: 29.0 inches
Tuxedo Park: 26.0 inches
Sheepshead Bay(Brooklyn): 24.0 inches
Soundview Park Homes (Bronx): 22.5 inches
Old Bethpage: 20.5 inches
Central Park (Manhattan): 20.0 inches
Yonkers: 19.5 inches
JFK Airport(Queens): 15.5 inches

New Jersey:

Elizabeth: 31.8 inches
Lyndhurst: 29.0 inches
Lincoln Park: 29.0 inches
Toms River: 28.0 inches
Lodi: 27.1 inches
Dennisville: 26.5 inches
Eldora: 25.0 inches
Edison: 25.0 inches
Secaucus: 25.0 inches
Newark Airport: 24.2 inches
Erma: 22.0 inches
Wrightsville: 19.2 inches
Atlantic City: 19.0 inches

Pennsylvania:

Philadelphia: 12.4 inches
Clifton Heights: 12.4 inches
Drexel Hill: 11.3 inches

Delaware:

Woodbury: 11.7 inches
Selbyville: 11.3 inches

Be sure to keep your WeatherBug active to receive the latest on the East Coast Blizzard. Get the latest updates anywhere on Twitter at WeatherBug WeatherBuzz.
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Story Image: A few people walk along the snow covered Boardwalk in Atlantic City, N.J., (Mel Evans, AP)
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Cause

On Earth, common weather phenomena include wind, cloud, rain, snow, fog and dust storms. Less common events include natural disasters such as tornadoes, hurricanes, typhoons and ice storms. Almost all familiar weather phenomena occur in the troposphere (the lower part of the atmosphere).[3] Weather does occur in the stratosphere and can affect weather lower down in the troposphere, but the exact mechanisms are poorly understood.[5]

Weather occurs primarily due to density (temperature and moisture) differences between one place to another. These differences can occur due to the sun angle at any particular spot, which varies by latitude from the tropics. In other words, the farther from the tropics you lie, the lower the sun angle is, which causes those locations to be cooler due to the indirect sunlight.[6] The strong temperature contrast between polar and tropical air gives rise to the jet stream.[7] Weather systems in the mid-latitudes, such as extratropical cyclones, are caused by instabilities of the jet stream flow (see baroclinity).[8] Weather systems in the tropics, such as monsoons or organized thunderstorm systems, are caused by different processes.

Because the Earth's axis is tilted relative to its orbital plane, sunlight is incident at different angles at different times of the year. In June the Northern Hemisphere is tilted towards the sun, so at any given Northern Hemisphere latitude sunlight falls more directly on that spot than in December (see Effect of sun angle on climate).[9] This effect causes seasons. Over thousands to hundreds of thousands of years, changes in Earth's orbital parameters affect the amount and distribution of solar energy received by the Earth and influence long-term climate. (see Milankovitch cycles).[10]

The uneven solar heating (the formation of zones of temperature and moisture gradients, or frontogenesis) can also be due to the weather itself in the form of cloudiness and precipitation.[11] Higher altitudes are cooler than lower altitudes, which is explained by the lapse rate.[12][13] On local scales, temperature differences can occur because different surfaces (such as oceans, forests, ice sheets, or man-made objects) have differing physical characteristics such as reflectivity, roughness, or moisture content.

Surface temperature differences in turn cause pressure differences. A hot surface heats the air above it and the air expands,lowering the air pressure and its density.[14] The resulting horizontal pressure gradient accelerates the air from high to low pressure, creating wind, and Earth's rotation then causes curvature of the flow via the Coriolis effect.[15] The simple systems thus formed can then display emergent behaviour to produce more complex systems and thus other weather phenomena. Large scale examples include the Hadley cell while a smaller scale example would be coastal breezes.

The atmosphere is a chaotic system, so small changes to one part of the system can grow to have large effects on the system as a whole.[16] This makes it difficult to accurately predict weather more than a few days in advance, though weather forecasters are continually working to extend this limit through the scientific study of weather, meteorology. It is theoretically impossible to make useful day-to-day predictions more than about two weeks ahead, imposing an upper limit to potential for improved prediction skill.[17]

Modification

The aspiration to control the weather is evident throughout human history: from ancient rituals intended to bring rain for crops to the U. S. Military Operation Popeye, an attempt to disrupt supply lines by lengthening the North Vietnamese monsoon. The most successful attempts at influencing weather involve cloud seeding; they include the fog- and low stratus dispersion techniques employed by major airports, techniques used to increase winter precipitation over mountains, and techniques to suppress hail.[41] A recent example of weather control was China's preparation for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. China shot 1,104 rain dispersal rockets from 21 sites in the city of Beijing in an effort to keep rain away from the opening ceremony of the games on August 8, 2008. Guo Hu, head of the Beijing Municipal Meteorological Bureau (BMB), confirmed the success of the operation with 100 millimeters falling in Baoding City of Hebei Province, to the southwest and Beijing's Fangshan District recording a rainfall of 25 millimeters.[42]

Whereas there is inconclusive evidence for these techniques' efficacy, there is extensive evidence that human activity such as agriculture and industry results in inadvertent weather modification:[41]

* Acid rain, caused by industrial emission of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides into the atmosphere, adversely effects freshwater lakes, vegetation, and structures.
* Anthropogenic pollutants reduce air quality and visibility.
* Climate change caused by human activities that emit greenhouse gases into the air is expected to affect the frequency of extreme weather events such as drought, extreme temperatures, flooding, high winds, and severe storms.[43]

The effects of inadvertent weather modification may pose serious threats to many aspects of civilization, including ecosystems, natural resources, food and fiber production, economic development, and human health.[44

Forecasting

Weather forecasting is the application of science and technology to predict the state of the atmosphere for a future time and a given location. Human beings have attempted to predict the weather informally for millennial, and formally since at least the nineteenth century.[25][26] Weather forecasts are made by collecting quantitative data about the current state of the atmosphere and using scientific understanding of atmospheric processes to project how the atmosphere will evolve.[27]

Once an all-human endeavor based mainly upon changes in barometric pressure, current weather conditions, and sky condition,[28][29] forecast models are now used to determine future conditions. Human input is still required to pick the best possible forecast model to base the forecast upon, which involves pattern recognition skills, teleconnections, knowledge of model performance, and knowledge of model biases. The chaotic nature of the atmosphere, the massive computational power required to solve the equations that describe the atmosphere, error involved in measuring the initial conditions, and an incomplete understanding of atmospheric processes mean that forecasts become less accurate as the difference in current time and the time for which the forecast is being made (the range of the forecast) increases. The use of ensembles and model consensus helps to narrow the error and pick the most likely outcome.[30][31][32]

There are a variety of end users to weather forecasts. Weather warnings are important forecasts because they are used to protect life and property.[33] Forecasts based on temperature and precipitation are important to agriculture,[34][35][36][37] and therefore to commodity traders within stock markets. Temperature forecasts are used by utility companies to estimate demand over coming days.[38][39][40] On an everyday basis, people use weather forecasts to determine what to wear on a given day. Since outdoor activities are severely curtailed by heavy rain, snow and the wind chill, forecasts can be used to plan activities around these events, and to plan ahead and survive them.

References

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# ^ Associated Press. After Freeze, Counting Losses to Orange Crop. Retrieved on 2008-05-26.
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# ^ Ellen Cohen. "Jupiter's Great Red Spot". Hayden Planetarium. http://haydenplanetarium.org/resources/ava/page/index.php?file=P0413jupispot. Retrieved 2007-11-16.
# ^ Suomi, V. E.; Limaye, S. S.; Johnson, D. R. (1991). "High Winds of Neptune: A possible mechanism". Science (AAAS (USA)) 251 (4996): 929–932. doi:10.1126/science.251.4996.929. PMID 17847386.
# ^ Sromovsky, Lawrence A. (1998-10-14). "Hubble Provides a Moving Look at Neptune's Stormy Disposition". HubbleSite. http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/1998/34/text/.
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# ^ Bill Christensen. Shock to the (Solar) System: Coronal Mass Ejection Tracked to Saturn. Retrieved on 2008-06-28.
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# ^ Rodney Viereck. Space Weather: What is it? How Will it Affect You? Retrieved on 2008-06-28.

Weather Bug

Monday, December 27, 2010

NOON EST, December 27, 2010

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