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Central PA Summer Thread


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Irene's dying fast. She might not be a hurricane by the time she hits the Delmarva.

Holy crap.

Hah, i've cringed at the media talking about this storm the last couple days. Now I do think that this is a serious high impact event for the Eastern Seaboard but the main news channels have hyped the bejesus out of this storm. Unless you got a storm thats rocketing up the coast, which hasn't quite happened yet with Irene.. its hard to maintain a full blown hurricane up into New England. Especially since this thing will be hitting land in NC before it either tracks briefly back into the Atlantic on the way to southern Jersey or southern NE.. or stays inside the coastline.

Whether its a strong tropical storm or some kind of a cat 1 hurricane is really not going to make much of a difference for folks in the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast as this is one of those hurricanes that is extremely large and hence has a wide reaching wind field. As the NHC notes, the lack of an inner core will probably prevent any kind of strengthening. This storm is another one of those cases where you look at the pressure and think heh, that 951 pressure should mean its a cat 4. But since the storm is so large, and doesn't have a tightly wound core.. you don't have the insane pressure gradient to support winds of that nature. You just have a lot more coverage of winds that can still be damaging, but not necessarily tear the roof off your home. My favorite example is hurricane Andrew and it's something I still can't get over. While the center of that storm went through Homestead at about 918-920ish pressure, 40 miles up the road Miami's lowest pressure reading got down to 992mb while having 85 sustained and G 115. Now THAT is tightly wound core right there.

At any rate, this storm is still going to have plenty of wind inland as well as pummel a lot of coastline. I do also think there will be storm surge issues in Long Island and southern NE with the unimpeded southern fetch on the east side of the storm. Otherwise, it's greatest impact will be flooding from rainfall which could be quite serious. If the very heavy band of rainfall finds a way to ride more up the Sus Valley, the main stem Susquehanna River is going to have some issues. The truly excessive stuff probably stays just east, but the folks there are even worse off with how wet it's been in SE PA. Def something to continue to watch closely as things start reaching up into PA.

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Irene's dying fast. She might not be a hurricane by the time she hits the Delmarva.

Holy crap.

wakefield aint doin good....................how ever some one down here in s fl. said today that if a major storm hits the n j shore, the parking lots in harrisburg fill up w/ seagulls.......i' m not kidding...please let me know. i'll follow this thred

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Hah, i've cringed at the media talking about this storm the last couple days. Now I do think that this is a serious high impact event for the Eastern Seaboard but the main news channels have hyped the bejesus out of this storm. Unless you got a storm thats rocketing up the coast, which hasn't quite happened yet with Irene.. its hard to maintain a full blown hurricane up into New England. Especially since this thing will be hitting land in NC before it either tracks briefly back into the Atlantic on the way to southern Jersey or southern NE.. or stays inside the coastline.

Whether its a strong tropical storm or some kind of a cat 1 hurricane is really not going to make much of a difference for folks in the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast as this is one of those hurricanes that is extremely large and hence has a wide reaching wind field. As the NHC notes, the lack of an inner core will probably prevent any kind of strengthening. This storm is another one of those cases where you look at the pressure and think heh, that 951 pressure should mean its a cat 4. But since the storm is so large, and doesn't have a tightly wound core.. you don't have the insane pressure gradient to support winds of that nature. You just have a lot more coverage of winds that can still be damaging, but not necessarily tear the roof off your home. My favorite example is hurricane Andrew and it's something I still can't get over. While the center of that storm went through Homestead at about 918-920ish pressure, 40 miles up the road Miami's lowest pressure reading got down to 992mb while having 85 sustained and G 115. Now THAT is tightly wound core right there.

At any rate, this storm is still going to have plenty of wind inland as well as pummel a lot of coastline. I do also think there will be storm surge issues in Long Island and southern NE with the unimpeded southern fetch on the east side of the storm. Otherwise, it's greatest impact will be flooding from rainfall which could be quite serious. If the very heavy band of rainfall finds a way to ride more up the Sus Valley, the main stem Susquehanna River is going to have some issues. The truly excessive stuff probably stays just east, but the folks there are even worse off with how wet it's been in SE PA. Def something to continue to watch closely as things start reaching up into PA.

I couldn't agree more. They showed a computer simulation on Inside Edition tonight that showed the "worst-case scenario" in New York - the arm of the Statue of Liberty ripped off. That won't happen in a tropical storm/weak Cat 1! I know Inside Edition is not "real" news, but the mainstream hasn't been much better. The way the media has hyped this makes you wonder if people will take it as seriously the next time.

Everyone is focusing on the wind/storm surge, when the inland flooding from this should easily do billions of dollars in damage. When you throw 5-8" of rain on top of areas that have already seen a foot of rain this month, that is a recipe for disaster. The 12-hour flash flood guidance in parts of New Jersey is less than 2", and I'm sure parts of NY and southeast PA are similar. I don't think the media will grasp this until the storm is over, unfortunately. If it was a Cat 3 or 4 now and had a tighter inner core, I can understand hyping the wind a little bit, but this might not even be a hurricane by the time it gets up here.

I'm all for warning people about what can happen, but it seems like the goal this week has been to scare everyone of all of the worst-case scenarios so that they keep watching...

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Ah good ol' NAM!

And PSU8315, why the hell were you watching INSIDE EDITION? ;)

I was watching the CBS Evening News and it came on. When I saw the Statue of Liberty's arm come off in the opening teaser, I just had to watch. Luckily they did it first so I didn't have to watch the rest of it and I was able to switch to Seinfeld.

Of course, that still doesn't make it right. :lol:

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I couldn't agree more. They showed a computer simulation on Inside Edition tonight that showed the "worst-case scenario" in New York - the arm of the Statue of Liberty ripped off. That won't happen in a tropical storm/weak Cat 1! I know Inside Edition is not "real" news, but the mainstream hasn't been much better. The way the media has hyped this makes you wonder if people will take it as seriously the next time.

Everyone is focusing on the wind/storm surge, when the inland flooding from this should easily do billions of dollars in damage. When you throw 5-8" of rain on top of areas that have already seen a foot of rain this month, that is a recipe for disaster. The 12-hour flash flood guidance in parts of New Jersey is less than 2", and I'm sure parts of NY and southeast PA are similar. I don't think the media will grasp this until the storm is over, unfortunately. If it was a Cat 3 or 4 now and had a tighter inner core, I can understand hyping the wind a little bit, but this might not even be a hurricane by the time it gets up here.

I'm all for warning people about what can happen, but it seems like the goal this week has been to scare everyone of all of the worst-case scenarios so that they keep watching...

Haha! I guess they should be fortunate that it isn't gonna be a 2, that might've ripped the other arm of the Statue of Liberty off. I think the worst was the other day I was watching CNN and the met had the model spaghetti plot up and the news guy asked him why they were tighter together than they were a couple days before and something to the tune of if it was the winds that made them farther apart... Yep.

Sometimes I consider the Daily show and Colbert Report more credible news sources :lol: .

But in all seriousness, yea the inland flooding is shaping to be a major issue. I really hadn't realized up until this storm came along that Philly was already nearly at their record rainfall for the month and this storm has the potential to darn near double it in one shot. Basically the corridor of excessive tropical rainfall is looking to track directly up through the areas that are currently the most flood prone. Other than possibly making for potentially historic type flooding in these suceptible areas, I think that the only thing that is "historic" about Irene is the fact that it is the classic East Coast type hurricane that we haven't seen in several years. It is also acting like one strengthwise, as it is typically very hard to get one on the NC coast above say 110 to 115mph much less get something like that further north. When I look at how this hurricane has tracked and evolved as well as how it is forecast to track and evolve it is very reminiscent of a Bertha ('96) and Floyd ('99) to me.

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Your prediction on rainfall?

And any reason why Dauphin County isn't in the flood watch?

Here's the CTP Flash flood guidance numbers for Dauphin County

PAZ057 2.6/ 3.4/ 3.6/ 3.8 :Dauphin Co.

I bolded the third number which is 6 hr criteria since this is likely going to be the duration of the part of Irene that drops the majority of the rainfall. Generally, most of the models have kept rain totals this high just barely to the east of Dauphin. The exception has been the European, which has been dropping more than that. Confidence isn't too high that rain totals of that nature will push that far west, hence no watch. They seem to be anticpating more of a 1-2" event in the Harrisburg to IPT corridor when blending all the guidance. That is something that can be handled without too many issues. What needs to be watched is the heavier rainfall core finds a way to get back west more or possibly some slow moving rainbands that could set up.

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i am in no way an expert, but looking at the radar, almost looks like it wants to head straiht through central pa

edit: never mind, now it looks like it is trning a little east

When I woke up a couple hours ago and looked to see what Irene did I was somewhat surprised how far down the Carolina coast she came in at. It seemed like the storm had a run of nearly due north movement prior to and making landfall. It does now have an eastward lean on its northerly motion as it moves through eastermost NC. However the northerly jog may have been enough to put more of the Sus Valley into some of the very heavy rainfall when it comes up through. HRRR range is starting to get into most of the duration of the storm now so it will be becoming a more reliable source of determining precip placement as the day wears on.

Also, I got GR2Analyst up and ripping last night so I will have that at my disposal to watch things evolve. I caught a really nice tornadic cell in eastern NC last night off of one of the feeder bands playing around with it.

NC cell from last night

post-1507-0-85770200-1314469101.png

Current CTP radar:

post-1507-0-75163500-1314469154.png

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Those graphics are great. Thanks for those - can't wait to see more as we get unto winter storms.

Yeah had a nice shower around 12:30, it wants to rain in HBG and looking at radar ... she'll get her wish.

Irene loves land - she looks better when over land than in open water; she did the same thing over Puerto Rico earlier. It'll be a Cat 1 when it his Jersey because so much got inland in NC. A really unique storm, no doubt.

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