Chasing the sky since 2005!
It has been quite a while since I have done anything here. Life has been insanely busy and chaotic which limit my time and unfortunately has limited my ability to keep up with things like blogs and chats. Soon enough, hopefully things will be winding down and I can relax more to get my crap together. :P
Pretty interesting “chase” day. Sitting outside at a restaurant down town, last week I got a good view of a very nice frontal system coming my way that packed some really decent wind in front of it.
It is apparent that we are now getting into the storm season more and more. June typically is when we get our best late afternoon pop ups. This was definitely not one I even saw coming (okay, I admit it, I have not kept up with weather much the past few days!) until I was outside.
Not too bad. Turned out to be a part of a multicell cluster (3 cells) that dumped a lot of rain and warranted this Flood Advisory:
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN WAKEFIELD HAS ISSUED AN * URBAN AND SMALL STREAM FLOOD ADVISORY FOR... SOUTHEASTERN CITY OF NORFOLK IN SOUTHEAST VIRGINIA... THIS INCLUDES THE CITY OF DOWNTOWN NORFOLK... NORTHERN CITY OF VIRGINIA BEACH IN SOUTHEAST VIRGINIA... THIS INCLUDES THE CITIES OF...VIRGINIA BEACH OCEANFRONT... KEMPSVILLE... * UNTIL 630 PM EDT * AT 536 PM EDT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE RADAR INDICATES AN AREA OF THUNDERSTORMS PRODUCING LOCALLY HEAVY RAINFALL ACROSS THE NORTHERN HALF OF NORFOLK AND VIRGINIA BEACH. THE STORMS WERE NEARLY STATONARY ALONG A SEA BREEZE BOUNDARY. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... ADDITIONAL RAINFALL AMOUNTS OF ONE INCH ARE POSSIBLE IN THE WARNED AREA. EXCESSIVE RUNOFF FROM HEAVY RAINFALL WILL CAUSE ELEVATED LEVELS ON SMALL CREEKS AND STREAMS...AND PONDING OF WATER IN URBAN AREAS... HIGHWAYS...STREETS AND UNDERPASSES AS WELL AS OTHER POOR DRAINAGE AREAS AND LOW LYING SPOTS.
My first chase of the season..if you could even call it that..
I was totally surprised on this one. Just as I was leaving the house to go to the market, I noticed some heavy clouds off to the west. I checked the radar with my phone and lo and behold, a nice little storm cell was just to my SW.
It was chaotic at best. I had to deal with city chasing in an extremely small radius. Everyone knows my complaint about this, so I will spare you.
Well, everything fell into place pretty much like it was supposed to. We got about 6 inches here, (visual estimate) Also, I got the very fun job of digging my car out of its little igloo so I could go to the store.
Fun times were had shovelling the snow all around my car…then dealing with the 6 or so inches that covered the car… This all took about an hour, just so I could go up the street to the store for 2 items.
The snow was quite great though. I enjoyed it. We had quite a few robins hanging around under our porches while the snow came down. I was amused. However the gifts they left behind were less than desirable…
The rest of the pics from Saturday are now on their own page instead of a post. I think pages for pictures are much nicer. Enjoy!
So I wake up yesterday to a Tweet from a local weather enthusiast, with a link to a picture of a snowfall total map for this area. 10-12 inches we were slotted for.
Yeah, right!
The last time we had a really big snow deal was the Blizzard of 1996 where I remember getting about 4 inches of snow. I remember going out and measuring it with my little purple plastic school ruler. It was exciting. I had a blast playing in the snow out in our massive front yard. Snowmen families were created (and destroyed), snow boulders were strategically created. Though the best memory of playing in the snow that year was writing out the entire first verse of Alanis Morissette’s “All I Really Want” in the snow in the middle of the yard. I was a huge fan and had just got the album a couple weeks prior. Scoring that album as a 7th grader was MASSIVE as the album was SO risque and controversial ;)
I also recall sitting at this same spot (different desk however) looking out the window in front of me at the snow, hoping school would cancel that Monday. School wound up being cancelled or late for a few days that week. You would have thought that all that time out of school would have given me plenty of time to finish a huge science project I had going. We had to make our own National Geographic type magazine on the planets. A LOT of writing was required. I was not keen on it at all. So, it was slapped together at the last minute and I got a crappy grade. Ah well, there was no Google then. *sigh* =)
I am very curious to see how this weekends storm pans out. Like ’96 its a weekend storm. Maybe it will be “Blizzard of 1996 – The Resurrection” =)
The front page of the newspaper yesterday
After a long day and night of flooding rains and wind gusts up to hurricane force (74mph+) I set out to see what kind of damage was nearby. My home and property did not get too much other than a very unhappy Pampas or two and a rogue limb. Oh, and leaves..there were lots of leaves.
As you can see, some people were rather quick to chop up limbs and trees and put them at the road for pickup.
So we knew Ida became extra-tropical not too long after it came onshore. We knew that it would cause some windy and wet weather along the east coast as a nor’easter..
AREA FORECAST DISCUSSION
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE WAKEFIELD VA
650 PM EST TUE NOV 10 2009
.SYNOPSIS…
A COLD FRONT MOVES SOUTH ACROSS THE REGION TONIGHT. THE REMNANT
LOW OF IDA MOVES EAST ALONG THE GULF COAST STATES WEDNESDAY…THEN
DEEPENS AS IT EXITS OFF THE CAROLINA COAST THURSDAY NIGHT. THIS
SYSTEM BECOMES NEARLY STATIONARY FRIDAY INTO SATURDAY MORNING.
HIGH PRESSURE REBUILDS INTO THE MID ATLANTIC REGION SUNDAY.
Meh, no big deal..just another coastal low..
AREA FORECAST DISCUSSION…CORRECTED
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE WAKEFIELD VA
430 PM EST WED NOV 11 2009
POSSIBLE HISTORIC NOREASTER…AT LEAST THE MOST SIGNIFICANT IN
SEVERAL YEARS..
Did many of us expect this??
My aunt laughed at me when I told her how bad it was supposed to get. I sure as hell would not make it up! I can only imagine how many others just shrugged it off. It was clear that many people did just that. There was a lot of talk on the TV about how people should take it seriously, but they do not since it is not a “named” storm. So, they gave it one.
“Atlantic Assault” (Thank you TWC!)
AREA FORECAST DISCUSSION
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE WAKEFIELD VA
442 PM EST THU NOV 12 2009
EAR TERM /UNTIL 6 AM FRIDAY MORNING/…
THE HISTORIC NOREASTER CONTINUES TO BATTER THE MID ATLC REGION.
ADDITIONAL CSTL FLOODING…STRONG WINDS…AND HEAVY RAINS WILL
CONTINUE TO HIGHLIGHT THE HAZARD REEL THROUGH FRI MORNING. IN
TERMS OF THE CSTL FLOODING WITH THE NEXT HIGH TIDE CYCLE (LATE
THIS AFTN-INTO THIS EVENING)…STILL EXPECT SIGNIFICANT (SEVERE)
CSTL FLOODING ALONG AND NEAR HAMPTON ROADS..
We were lucky. No real damage to our property and despite a few close calls, we did not lose power. Some of my friends were not as lucky. Power outages, tides flooding their homes, trees down..I lost cable for 2 hours. That’s it.
So, we all have been aware for quite a while now that Tropical Storm Ida made landfall at 6:40 a.m. Eastern Time on Dauphin Island, Alabama. Not too long afterwards, it was considered “Extra-Tropical” bringing tons of rain to the south eastern US.
This afternoon the first rain bands moved into the Hampton Roads area. A nearby weather enthusiast posted a photo to Twitter, and that was all it took. I grabbed my keys and camera and was gone. Did not even bother to take my purse that was sitting right there on the table next to me, which contained my drivers licence and spotter ID card (I like to keep that on me just in case, cause you never know if you get approached for “suspicious behaviour”)
I was only intending on going down the road and coming back. After all this time, I should know that if I go out for anything weather related, I should expect to go a lot farther than I intended.
Storm Prediction Center
Monday, 31. January 2011
Ryan Kruspe
