The next danger in a winter that has already conditioned people on the East Coast as to the need of consulting the weather-prophet twice, does not come in the form of a nice band of snow on a map. It comes in the form of distance: the proximity of a growing coastal storm to the coast, and which areas of the population will be on the chilly side of that boundary.
Forecasters predicted a nor’easter to develop offshore of North Carolina and subsequently strengthen as it tracks northeast to establish a typical combination of dangers in the Southeast to New England: building snow, destructive wind, and a surge at heights that could activate water on avenues. The Outer Banks were especially concerned about the possibility of coastal flooding, and frequent destruction by hurricanes has turned every new high-tide fade more into reality.
“This powerful coastal storm will also coincide with a higher tide cycle, which will exacerbate potential coastal flooding impacts” according to the National Weather Service in Newport/Morehead City in North Carolina.
The thing is that these storms such as this one are not friendly to the everyday life only because of the headline totals, but also because of the tight gradients. The movement of a snow plow over Washington to New York can be replaced by a bare road by a difference in track of about 50 miles. That is sensitive because of the mode of feeding by nor’easters, which is cold, heavy air moving to the south pushing through the land pushing against warmer and moisture-having air in the Atlantic. In the places where the collision is most intense the air nearly turns into a conveyor belt, pushing and squeezing moisture out at an adequately rapid pace to produce heavy snow a few miles inland whilst the near shore maintains a fight with the rain, sleet, and spray of the wind.
Once rapid intensification comes into play, the words alter, as well. A “bomb cyclone” is not another type of storm, it is a pressure reduction of 24mbars or more per 24 hours, which is a level indicating weakening enough to increase the speed and intensity of winds and precipitation. The deepening of that along the East Coast is in water, which may provide inland the heat and moisture, and which thus reduces an offshore low into an engine to scatter bands of snow on shore and to collect piles of waves at the same time.
Those are not mere winds. Projections gave the possibility of extensive gusts between 30-to 50 mph with potential values being much higher in areas of the coast incurring exposed capes and barrier islands as the long fetch of the open water could directly convert into beach erosion and power-line damage. Out to sea, the height of the waves was estimated to be in the teens, and even higher, but that is not important as an amount, but as a fire: high tide waves have reduced the police margin on coastal roads, dunes and sea front houses.
To the farther inland the story of the snow was, of course, to start earlier and to the southward than many believe. The arrangement encouraged the formation of the snow along the Appalachians initially, which spread to areas of Georgia and the Carolinas before the northern shield of the storm attempted to pull to the Mid-Atlantic coast and New England. Across southeast New England, Cape Cod, Martha Vineyard, Nantucket, the wind, snowfall rate and coastal exposure heightened the chances of the blizzard-like weather conditions in addition to the risk of floods.
The cold itself, beyond the storm, had its name: a wider, deeper shove of polar wind, and one which was able to put the record of days to the test. It was predicted that Miami might wake to 36 degrees, which would be something exceptional not by virtue of it never having occurred, but because it rarely occurred.
And everything of it is a bigger winter contradiction. As sections of the United States continually sink into the below-average, most of the world is still warmer than most, and cold air can still be hurled south in a concentrated stream due to Arctic-related disturbances. The functional outcome is neither a neatly packaged story of “more” or “less” winter, but a time of the year where greatest disruptive days are sometimes determined by a few storm tracks, the timing of tides and the rate at which a coastal low can discover the fuel to intensify.
