AccuWeather director of forecast operations Carl Erickson wrote in a mail that there is a growing threat of a fast-enhancing coastal storm this weekend. To communities that just recently scratched their way out of snowbanks and ice, the warning is not so much like weather talk as it is a challenge to endurance.
The weekend arrangement has a familiar name which is nor easter but there is an added advantage. An extended period of hazardous cold weather has taken its seat with daytime temperatures remaining well below freezing at several locations and wind chills falling below zero in several areas of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast as reported in an Area Forecast Discussion by the Mount Holly, N.J., National Weather Service office. Cold of that sort alters the odds: the roads refreeze more quickly once thawed during the day, domestic pipes become more exposed and any power outage becomes not just an inconvenience but a danger.
The focus on forecast attention has been made on two corridors, which anchor East Coast winter storms. One is the one that runs southwestern Virginia into North Carolina and probably to South Carolina; the other is the one that covers the eastern part of New England where some communities in recent years have recorded more than 20 inches of snow. The National Weather Service has referred to the continuing consensus as a potential heavy-snow in the eastern Carolinas and coastal Mid-Atlantic to coastal southern and eastern New England. Whether the storm develops out at sea is not the uncertain part, but how near it gets after it intensifies, the difference in which is only dozens of miles, in which case the plowable snowfall and the weekend of cold and wind and little more are distinctly different.
The name bomb cyclone is one that is always attention-grabbing and rightful so. A storm with central pressure which decreases by at least 24 millibars within 24 hours is characterized as Bombogenesis, which can result in a rapid intensification that tends to shorten the gradients in pressure and increase the speed of the wind. The process of rapid -deepening may take place in a nor’easter, the coastal orientation of the storm and the north-east winds typical of that side of the storm. Practically it is a reminder that the totals of snowfall alone do not reflect what people are experiencing on the ground: snow falling, visibility being poor, and the type of gusts that cause old windows to shake and tree branches already frozen with ice to strangle up.
Wind and water are less talked about dangers in forecasts about winter, although their anticipated formation raises both of them in this storm. The Mount Holly office had issued warnings that the effects would include powerful winds and coastal flooding as the storm will have tight pressure gradient with very strong wind field. In some areas of the Mid-Atlantic coast, onshore flow in the line of the astronomic tides may increase the risk of coastal floods and hazardous surf. Beaches and dunes do not require a hurricane to erode they require continual waves at the wrong place.
The wind prediction is important even in inland areas to transform a cool weather to physical torture. The Mount Holly discussion explained inland gusts as 25 to 35 mph, and coastal gusts as high as 50mph, depending on the track. It is that mix of powdery snow and a very sharp wind that moves some places to the level of blizzard-travel conditions even when the amount of snowfall is not necessarily a record.
In this context, preparation is not about panic, rather it is reduction of friction. National Weather Service points out that black ice is hard to notice on winter roads and that only a few simple measures, checking wipers, heat, and keeping fluid tanks topped off and avoiding travelling alone, will reduce the probability that a quick trip to the store turns into an hour-long wait in the cold. It is also beneficial in planning about a few days of off schedules, since storms that follow immediately after past snow and ice are likely to slow the recovery efforts, increase the disparity between supply and demand, and leave daily life to run on half the voltage.
The most significant fact is the one, which forecasters come back to constantly: track rules results. The center of the storm does not have to land on shore to create issues; it only has to be within close range so that it can dump heavy snowbands, high winds, and water of the coast into one weekend frame.
