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Sandy Obs and Banter thread - fall 2012


mappy

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There still were a lot of outages though I thought there would be more. I don't see the power outage wording as being a problem. I do think the duration was and possibly the lack of leaves and wind direction being from the northwest as that is the prevailing wind direction during the windiest time of year which might give trees an advantage of holding up during a high wind event. Maybe the drought also helped as I got almost 8 inches of rain with 50 to 60 mph gusts for 4 or 5 hrs and never had a tree uprooted. That's pretty amazing. The deepening offshore and gfs overdoing the winds some also led to the calls for hurricane gusts but I don't see how anyone forecasting could have ignored them as they would have been pounded if the winds were underplayed and actually occurred.

And for our area, the derecho also helped diminish outages in this storm. I would guess many of the weak trees that went down in those 70 mph gusts would have fallen in 60 gusts as well.

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It seemed as though alot of dry air got wrapped into the system just before land fall.This kept some of the rain totals down on the north and east sides of the storm. But this storm is still not over. It is snowing hard just 10 miles from me. I attempted to do a chase up to Deep Creek this morning and was not able to get anywhere close. It is nasty to the west though.

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Any reports out of the Deep Creek area? We're supposed to spend a long weekend out there this coming weekend, just wondering what it'll be like.

They will have the roads reopened by then. 40 miles of 68 was closed last night and this morning. I tried to get there on 50 west and there are alot of road closures due to flooding. If anyone wants to chase snow you can see it on Route 55 west of Strasburg.

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that was probably the biggest mistake in all this.. not going to the mtns

If I didn't have a house with large trees I would have gone. I have a friend with a condo on deep creek and he's really cool about letting my family use it anytime he isnt. Hindsight is always 20/20 but I agree, it was a big mistake and opportunity lost to see something special.

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I for one think it's remarkable how accurate the forecasts were (particularly by the Euro) so far in advance for an event that, if not unprecedented, is certainly extremely rare. I'm glad most of us can wake up in relative peace and quiet this morning, but based on the comments in the NYC subforum, they are facing some serious damage and a long recovery. "Storm of the Century" is certainly hyperbole, but this will probably be a Top 5 natural disaster when all is said and done.

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I was talking about NHC, didn't they have it much later than 00z?

I'd have to look. Know yesterday they had it about 8. Think some were saying it was fast once the center became less apparent on radar etc.

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I for one think it's remarkable how accurate the forecasts were (particularly by the Euro) so far in advance for an event that, if not unprecedented, is certainly extremely rare. I'm glad most of us can wake up in relative peace and quiet this morning, but based on the comments in the NYC subforum, they are facing some serious damage and a long recovery. "Storm of the Century" is certainly hyperbole, but this will probably be a Top 5 natural disaster when all is said and done.

The numerical guidance was exceptionally good for this event. We are running some sensitivity experiments right now to see what impact, if any, the extra 06z/18z radisonde observations had on the GFS deterministic forecasts. I actually suspect they didn't have nearly as large of an impact as people will be expecting them to have had.

I can think of a handful of cases where large impact, anomalous events were (at least in the eyes of numerical models) fairly easy to predict. Although I do not really have time for side projects, and we focus too much on our busts, I should perhaps start putting together a list of these "well forecast events" and see if I can composite them (to see what they have in common).

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I only have to drive 40 minutes to see snow falling from the sky:

http://www.chart.state.md.us/video/video.asp?feed=ff00082f00e700dd00451536ea235d0a

68 is open @ Keysers. Looks awesome. Even just past Cumberland up Savage has accum snow.

I'm having a hard time justifying burning 50 bucks worth of gas to spend 30 minutes in the snow.

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I only have to drive 40 minutes to see snow falling from the sky:

http://www.chart.sta...0451536ea235d0a

68 is open @ Keysers. Looks awesome. Even just past Cumberland up Savage has accum snow.

I'm having a hard time justifying burning 50 bucks worth of gas to spend 30 minutes in the snow.

there is no "I" in team. Pics please!

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The numerical guidance was exceptionally good for this event....

Always pleased to read your comments, dtk.

As I recall, comparing the EURO and GFS just the previous Wednesday eve, it seemed

that Sandy would come ashore at NE New Jersey. The EURO, for several runs, had Sandy

near Chrisfield, MD. It seems that the GFS had a better concept of landfall on the N. Jersey

coast but that the EURO had smaller run to run variability.

Bottom line; a major event was modeled fairly well over a week in advance.

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We got power back around 11:30. A huge thank you to the linemen of Potomac Edison! I really thought we would be out longer, but only 17 hours. Surveyed the house this morning for damage and found none other than the back being plastered with shredded leaves. Rough night though, at times thought the roof was going to peel off on the back. The noise outside made it hard to sleep. I think I finally fell asleep around 2, this after one of our smoke detectors kept alerting us that the battery needed to be changed.

Neighborhood is pretty much intact. A lot of signs bent over at the ground level and street names just gone. One house under construction had its side wall collapse as it did not have a roof on it yet.

I have no idea the sustained wind speed nor the gusts but it was intense for about 8 hours straight.

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I'm kind of amazed that the trees look pretty much the same as yesterday. I guess even in the middle of Fall, leaves won't drop until they want to.

I still have 3 trees with a majority of leaves on them. They hadn't turned at all so I'm not surprised.

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