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Hurricane Irene and the mid-Atlantic (Pre-game show)


Ian

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while counterintuitive in some ways i'd favor the idea of the nam now ... tho im still not sure on the gradient. still, gfs 3"+ dc area east if eyeballing right. never looked great west of the lowlands.

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while counterintuitive in some ways i'd favor the idea of the nam now ... tho im still not sure on the gradient. still, gfs 3"+ dc area east if eyeballing right. never looked great west of the lowlands.

2 to 4 inches DC Metro seems a good bet at least. Perhaps up to 6 inches at most if the NAM were right or some training in spots

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while counterintuitive in some ways i'd favor the idea of the nam now ... tho im still not sure on the gradient. still, gfs 3"+ dc area east if eyeballing right. never looked great west of the lowlands.

I only vaguely remember Isabel. Is this setting up to be worse at this point? You and Matt have such great weather memory.

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I'm not Ian - but maybe similar. Certainly not in terms of storm surge...but perhaps winds could get close for a bit.

I will have to find my book in which I keep notes of sig DC weather events in that I have experienced, but during Isabel I had a wind gust in the 65 to 70 mph range that took down a huge branch in my backyard

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I only vaguely remember Isabel. Is this setting up to be worse at this point? You and Matt have such great weather memory.

I'm not Ian, but I think rainfall totals will probably be higher in your area (and many other areas as well) this time around. isabel's rainfall was kind of a disappointment. Wind wise though, Isabel has this one beat (at least in the immediate DC/Baltimore metro). There were sustained winds in the 50's in parts of the area, and the highest gust was either 82 or 83 in MoCo (not sure how accurate that measure was though).

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I'm not Ian, but I think rainfall totals will probably be higher in your area (and many other areas as well) this time around. isabel's rainfall was kind of a disappointment. Wind wise though, Isabel has this one beat. There were sustained winds in the 50's in parts of the area, and the highest gust was either 82 or 83 in MoCo (not sure how accurate that measure was though).
We were on the east side of Isabel, this time we are on the west side. Makes a big difference.
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I only vaguely remember Isabel. Is this setting up to be worse at this point? You and Matt have such great weather memory.

rainfall in Isabel at least in my area was rather light under 2 inches but winds were impressive from the SE. I think Irene could beat in both the wind dept (N, NE) and even moreso in the rain dept. JMHO.

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Isabel will probably be worse vs this as far as actual wind speeds go, but power outages may end up very similar if the heavier rains verify. Isabel also had two distinct periods of wind, the biggest gusts hitting overnight, we all slept in the hallway due to the noise.

That happens several times a month at your place, right?

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Here is a good run down of Isabel http://www.weatherbook.com/Isabel_report.htm

Doesn't seem as if we could rival this,

"In the Washington area, there were several periods of strong winds between 5 p.m. and 1 a.m., interpersed with periods of lesser winds. The strongest wind recorde at a major station was 78 mph at Quantico, followed by 69 mph at Andrews AFB and Patuxent NAS. National Airport clocked a two minute sustained wind of 45 mph, with a peak gust of 58 mph."

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Here is a good run down of Isabel http://www.weatherbook.com/Isabel_report.htm

Doesn't seem as if we could rival this,

"In the Washington area, there were several periods of strong winds between 5 p.m. and 1 a.m., interpersed with periods of lesser winds. The strongest wind recorde at a major station was 78 mph at Quantico, followed by 69 mph at Andrews AFB and Patuxent NAS. National Airport clocked a two minute sustained wind of 45 mph, with a peak gust of 58 mph."

Aren't the current NWS forecasts fairly close to this?

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Aren't the current NWS forecasts fairly close to this?

Yes, but I always figure they are overdone.

But when I read that summary, we have been fairly saturated lately -- seems like a lot of Isabel damage occurred from trees falling down cause of 50 mph winds blowing on extremely moist soil from earlier storms. Probably close to a similar situation now. But I imagine a lot of our old, dying trees have already been cleared out, after Snowmaggeden, those two severe storm last summer, the wet snowstorm this past January, and that big windstorm we had this spring.

Still, interesting, though. Knew Isabel made landfall in NC as well, but didn't realize it was also 100 mph at landfall, just like Irene is. But we are on west side for this one. For Isabel, we were on east.

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I only vaguely remember Isabel. Is this setting up to be worse at this point? You and Matt have such great weather memory.

I wasn't here for Isabel. I'm more skeptical on the wind than rain I think. Tho the gradient is really tight on every model at least to DC for now I think the track is more or less locked in through our area.

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One thing about Isabel, at least from what I remember, the wind-field didn't seem to be quite as expansive as we have with Irene, (Although it did have a big one) and where Isabel tracked it's closest (to us) in South-Central VA, it was over land/weaker than Irene will be when it passes it's closest (to us).

Definitely not saying Irene will beat Isabel in winds, after all we're on the back quadrant, but it could end up somewhat similar if models do not trend east.

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