Winter From Hell Continues In Eastern United States

MODIS real color satellite images
of southern and central New England
and the New York City area. Top image
taken last July 19. Bottom image taken
Friday. Looks like two different planets.Add caption

I don't even have to get into the details of the forecast for everywhere this Saturday. Extreme winter weather is continuing unabated in the eastern United States.

It's almost as if we broke the weather, and now things are stuck in one position and we can't change it.

Let's hope conditions someday, somehow snap back to normal, but I don't see signs of it happening yet.

The cold this week was unprecedented in parts of the Midwest and East. As Dr. Jeff Masters points out in his blog, some of the major records include:

--Erie, Pennsylvania tying its alltime coldest temperature of 18 below on Moday. The record was first set on January 18, 1994.

--On  Tuesday, Jamestown, in southwestern New York reached an incredible 31 below zero, its coldest reading on record. The old record of 30 below was tied the day before.

--Lynchburg, Virginia reached 11 below on Friday, breaking its all time record low of 10 below in January, 1985 and February, 1996

--Flint, Michigan tied its all time record low of 25 below, first set in January, 1976.

In New England, in addition to the incredible snows in the eastern half ot half of that region, all time records for the coldest month of February are being challenged, especially up toward Maine in cities like Bangor and Caribou.

But the month will likely end up in the Top 5 coldest in a wide expanse from Burlington, Vermont to Boston and beyond.

As of Saturday morning, a vast area of the Tennessee and Ohio River valley regions remained under a winter storm warning for four to eight inches of snow in most of these areas, along with large areas of freezing rain.

A total mess there.

Closer view of southern New England Friday, real
color MODIS satellite image. Click on the image
to make details more readily viewed. A lot of sea ice
very rare for the region, is visible near
Cape Cod and the Islands and in Long Island Sound
If you look closely, you can see a thin white west to
east line in western and central Massachusetts.
That's the path of a large tornado that removed trees
visible nearly four years after the tornado struck on
June 1, 2011.  

The storm is heading into New England, where all storms seem to go lately. Most of the region is under a winter weather advisory for three to six inches of snow, followed by mixed precipitation, especially in the southern half of New England.

This will be a heavier, wetter snow than some of the past storms. Plus the powdery snow can absorb any rain that falls and not have the water run off. (The terminology for this situation is the current snow cover isn't "ripe") This all has  the National Weather Service in the Boston area nervous.

From their forecast discussion:

"The warmer nature of this event means that any precip that falls will have a higher water content than previous storms. The snowpack across the region is not at all ripe, so it can hand a fair amount of water......it is not so good regarding roofs. 

Any precip. that falls, as much as one or slightly more inches of water near the south coast, is going to add significant weight in the form of extra water or ice. 

We encourage cleaning roofs if able before the precipitation begins this afternoon."

In addition, all the storm drains are clogged so rainwater will collect in streets, so flooding will be a problem. And ice, when the temperature crashes to Arctic levels again Sunday night.

Dense fog could add to the misery in southern New England too. Yes, it's really bad there.

Stop to think how awful parts of New England are. We shake our heads in wonder but, as E.J. Graff, a senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University noted in the New York Times, this is a bonafide major natural disaster for the nation:

"For those of us living here, it's not a pretty picture. We are being devastated by a slow motion natural disaster of historic proportions. The disasters is eerily quiet. There are no floating bodies or vistas of destroyed homes. But there's no denying that this is a catastrophe."

Graff notes how public transportation is spotty at best in the snow, so people can't get to work. Everybody is spending extra money on snow removal, car and home repairs and heating in the record cold.  

Lots of ice surrounds lower Manhattan Friday
after one of the most frigid Februaries on record.  

Businesses are suffering. Who's going to go out to restaurants and shopping in the snowbound nightmare which is the Boston region?  Goverments are spending way more on winter snow removal than budgeted. Where will that money come from, Graff wonders.

Graff paints a dark picture of the winter whiteness:

"Where are the federal disaster funds, the presidential visit, Andersoon Cooper interviewing victims, volunteers flying in, goods and services donated after hurricanes and tornadoes? The pictures may be pretty, but we need help now."

Graff is right. The disaster isn't as visually dramatic as a huge tornado. But it's causing at least as much damage as one of those big tornadoes and hurricanes.

It's not over, either. The cold and threats of snow remain. This next storm will have some rain with it. Eventually, storms will carry much warmer spring time air and heavy rains. That sets eastern New England up for a big flood threat, eventually.

Meanwhile, the severe storms and extreme cold continue. And it's spreading.

Before dawn this morning, temperatures in the Dallas-Fort Worth area were nice and mild, in the mid and upper 60s. But the way this winter, things have to change dramatically, right.

Of course they do.

In northern Texas, including the Dallas-Fort Worth area, winter storm watches are up Sunday and Monday as the Arctic cold front will reach that region, moisture will go up and over the cold air, whih will result in a bunch of sleet and freezing rain.

Large sections of the Rockies, including most of Colorado, are under winter storm warnings today for heavy snow.

After the East Coast storm rolls on out Sunday night, another blast of extreme Arctic air is settling in over the Midwest and East.

Several more waves of Arctic air are due between now and the second week of March. It's hard to pick out when and how the series of winter storms will play out over the next three weeks, but there's certain to be more areas of heavy snow, dangerous ice, and bitter cold in the coming three weeks.

Yes, this is a rather dark, depressing post. I get that. But it's reality.

I imagine the weather pattern will break eventually, and at some point we will be talking about bright, warm spring weather. This extreme cold and extreme snow will be a fading memory.

Weather events have been getting more extreme in recent years and decades. Extremes cause real inconvenience, and worse, real suffering.

So let's all be careful out there, OK?