Mother Nature does NOT like me in Canada. The last time I was here was in 1993 and I had to leave early due to the Great Nor'easter of '93 (aka The Storm of the Century).

Read about that last storm, I apparently caused by going to Canada, on Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Storm_of_the_Century

Luckily, the storm in '93 only cut our vacay short by a day, so I'm not complaining about that. We just hopped in my car and headed back to Syracuse. It's just that I flew this time and jockeying flights around is a PitA. Plus, if Bloomberg decides to shut down the subways and buses (like he did the day before Irene arrived in '11), I'll be stranded at LGA since I know no one in NYC with a car. As of now, I changed my flight to Sunday evening so, hopefully that will be OK. But if King Mike announces he's shutting down the MTA, I may decide to cancel our Sunday trip to Niagara Falls and try to get on a red-eye back to NYC. Sheesh... if this happens every time I go to Canada, I'm never going again!!

First real snow of 2012 for #NYC makes the view outside my bedroom window seem a little nicer....

First real snow of 2012 for #NYC makes the view outside my bedroom window seem a little nicer...., a photo by thepetecom on Flickr.

The winter of 2011-2012 is definitely a weird one for NYC, what with the first snow back in October and temperatures only really dropping to normal levels in late December and January and finally second snow well into the second half of January. What's up Mother Nature?

Aw, crap. Winter finally showed up. 20F/Windchill:10F. (Is "showed" a word?)

Aw, crap. Winter finally showed up. 20F/Windchill:10F. (Is "showed" a word?), a photo by thepetecom on Flickr.

At least it'll be warming up a bit by the weekend. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out, winter!

The weather right now in NYC (grrrr!)

The weather right now in NYC (grrrr!)

From Late Last Night: Rain and Soft Thunder in NYC...

Finally crashed around 3:30am--slept with my window open and this is what I woke up to:

I've checked the news and from my own perspective, NYC didn't get hit very hard at all.  I mean, compared to the madness that the news was predicting.  I got some text messages from my wife this morning in Connecticut and they lost power around 4:30am and don't have it back yet. So, we NYCers seemed to have done all right.  Our infrastructure might have been tougher, too, though.

Now I've got to get some breakfast, shower and shoot some footage of how things look today.

Pre-#Irene northern #Manhattan pics taken earlier today (pt 2 of 2)

Of course, will it be as pleasant out tomorrow at the same time?

See the full gallery on Posterous

Pre-#Irene northern #Manhattan pics taken earlier today (pt 1 of 2)

It was an amazingly tranquil day today and I think these pics prove it.

See the full gallery on Posterous

The view south from directly beneath the #GeorgeWashingtonBridge (#gwb) as we wait for #Irene

Still waiting.  Oh and I took this photo at one of the most low-lying areas I could find. About 10 feet from the water of the Hudson.

For fellow NYCers, a hurricane evacuation zone map in English and Spanish #irene

So, hurricane Irene is apparently going to hit NYC late afternoon/early evening on Sunday, August 28.  Not sure if you're near a flood area? Check the map. I found I was close to a Zone C which is only a threat to neighbors a few blocks away from me (and not to me) and that's ONLY if a category 3 or 4 hurricane were to hit and that's very rare.  Grab the map in English and in Spanish.  Read more about this at Gothamist or at Accuweather.com.

hurricane_map_english.pdf Download this file

hurricane_map_spanish_06.pdf Download this file

Yowza--July in NYC one of the hottest Julys (Julies?) in history (sure felt like it ta me!)

“A Hot Summer In New York” from underpaidgenius:

I had the misfortune of being in NYC on July 6.

Sam Dolnick, The Cruelest Month - Suffering Through, Rather Than Savoring, Summer

If the high and low temperatures in Central Park on Saturday average at least 77.5, July 2010 will rank as the hottest month in New York since records began in 1869. Stephen Fybish, a weather historian, has delved into the numbers, from the National Weather Service, for these other highs and lows:

• July 6 was the hottest day this month, hitting 103 (and 97 in Mr. Fybish’s Upper West Side kitchen). The highs on July 6 from 1999 to 2009: 101, 79, 72, 82, 89, 81, 82, 77, 83, 79, 83. The only years that have had temperatures topping 103 are 1918 (Aug. 7), 1936 (July 9) and 1977 (July 21).


• This June was hot, too, creating the hottest June-July combination on record, with an average of 78.1 degrees (runner-up: 1966, with 77.6). If August averages 76.1 degrees or higher, 2010 will be the hottest June-July-August ever, beating 1966.


• Actually, it has been the warmest March through July on record, averaging 65.5.


• July 21 is the date that has reached 100 the most times, in 1926, 1930, 1977 and 1980; this year, it was 93.


• Number of July 2010 days that topped 90 degrees: 16, tying with July 1966 for fourth place.


• Number of July 2010 days that topped 89 degrees: 21, ranking second behind 1993.


• Warmest July night on record: July 7, 2010, tied with July 15, 1995, at 84.

And I love how this isn’t getting much play in the mainstream media.  Time magazine has a poor noseless woman on their cover that seems to be a play to sway the American people back toward supporting the war Afganistan, but meanwhile, the obvious heat waves plaguing planet Earth aren’t causing much alarm.  Maybe it’s just a few of us bloggers who are overreacting?  All I know is that I’m glad I finally got an air conditioner (a family member took pity on us after hearing of our horrible heat).  After all—August has only just arrived and it’s a well-kept secret that September is still quite toasty.

Perhaps by the time October rolls around the MSM will feel like talking about all of this.

Good Point from Underpaid Genius: Worldwide Heatwave: Not In The News Though

underpaidgenius:

The world is gripped in an unprecedented heatwave. The recent East Coast weather pattern has led to 10 days of over 90º F temperatures. 

This is a worldwide phenomenon, which is beling largely unreported by the papers here in the US. Here’s a May 30 2010 Guardian piece on the Indian heat wave:

Record temperatures in northern India have claimed hundreds of lives in what is believed to be the hottest summer in the country since records began in the late 1800s.

The death toll is expected to rise with experts forecasting temperatures approaching 50C (122F) in coming weeks. More than 100 people are reported to have died in the state of Gujarat where the mercury topped at 48.5C last week. At least 90 died in Maharashtra, 35 in Rajasthan and 34 in Bihar.

And it’s even worse in Africa and West Asia, as reported by Jeff Masters on 24 June:

Extreme heat wave sets all-time high temperature records in Africa and Middle East

A withering heat wave of unprecedented intensity and areal covered has smashed all-time high temperatures in four nations in the Middle East and Africa over the past week. Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Chad, and Niger all set new records for their hottest temperatures of all time, and several other Middle East nations came within a degree of their hottest temperatures ever. The heat was the most intense in Iraq, which had its hottest day in history on June 14, 2010, when the mercury hit 52.0°C (125.6°F) in Basra. Iraq’s previous record was 51.7°C (125.1°F) set August 8, 1937, in Ash Shu’aybah. It was also incredibly hot in Saudi Arabia, which had its hottest temperature ever on Tuesday (June 22): 52.0°C (125.6°F), measured in Jeddah, the second largest city in Saudi Arabia. The previous record was 51.7°C (125.1°F), at Abqaiq, date unknown. The record heat was accompanied by a sandstorm, which caused eight power plants to go offline, resulting in blackouts to several Saudi cities.

In Africa, Chad had its hottest day in history on Tuesday (June 22), when the temperature reached 47.6°C (117.7°F) at Faya. The previous record was 47.4°C (117.3°F) at Faya on June 3 and June 9, 1961. Niger tied its record for hottest day in history on Tuesday (June 22), when the temperature reached 47.1°C (116.8°F) at Bilma. That record stood for just one day, as Bilma broke the record again on Wednesday (June 23), when the mercury topped out at 48.2°C (118.8°F). The previous record was 47.1°C on May 24, 1998, also at Bilma.

Three countries came within a degree of their all time hottest temperature on record during the heat wave. Bahrain had its hottest June temperature ever, 46.9°C, on June 20, missing the all-time record of 47.5°C (117.5°F), set July 14, 2000. Temperatures in Quatar reached 48.8°C (119.8°F) on June 20. Quatar’s all-time record hottest temperature was 49.6°C (121.3°F) set on July 9, 2000. It was also very hot in Kuwait, with temperatures reaching 51°C (123.8°F) in the capital on June 15. Kuwait’s all-time hottest temperature was 51.9°C (125.4°F), on July 27,2007, at Abdaly. According to Essa Ramadan, a Kuwaiti meteorologist from Civil Aviation, Matrabah, Kuwait smashed this record and had Asia’s hottest temperature in history on June 15 this year, when the mercury hit 54.0°C (129.2°F). However, data from this station is notoriously bad, and each year bogus record highs have to be corrected, according to an email I received from weather record researcher Maximiliano Herrera. Asia’s hottest temperature in history will very likely remain the 53.5°C (128.3°F) recorded at MohenjuDaro, Pakistan on May 26 this year.

Commentary
We’ve now had six countries in Asia and Africa that have beaten their all-time hottest temperature record during the past two months. As I discussed in my blog about Pakistan’s May 26 record, Southeast Asia also had its all-time hottest temperature in May, when the mercury hit 47°C (116.6°F) in Myinmu, Myanmar on May 12. All of these records are unofficial, and will need to be certified by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). According to Chris Burt, author of Extreme Weather, setting four national heat records in one month is not unprecedented—in August 2003, five countries (the UK, France, Portugal, Germany, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein) all broke their all-time heat records during that year’s notorious summer heat wave. Fortunately, the residents of the countries affected by this week’s heat wave are more adapted to extreme high temperatures, and we are not seeing the kind of death tolls experienced during the 2003 European heat wave (30,000 killed.) This week’s heat wave in Africa and the Middle East is partially a consequence of the fact that Earth has now seen three straight months with its warmest temperatures on record, according to NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. It will be interesting to see if the demise of El Niño in May will keep June from becoming the globe’s fourth straight warmest month on record.

Not an especially great record to set.

The facts are pretty clear: high temperatures in all parts of the world, and months of hottest temperatures ever.

The oceans are warmer than ever too, so expect — along with drought — an increase in hurricane and typhoons.

But why isn’t the global heat wave newsworthy? Why does the Washington Post run a story on the heat wave there, and not talk to one climate scientist? They had like 8 reporters working on the story, but no one could call NOAA?

It’s fodder: reading about someone’s German Shepherd suffering from the DC heat is fun, in a way. But having someone thread the needle about global temperature at at all time high — hot enough to kill tens or hundreds of thousands of people, if things continue — is nowhere to be found.

There’s this thing called “the tipping point” where the ocean will run out of space for more CO2.  I wonder if we’ve passed that. I also wonder if there are other “tipping points” where once there’s less than a certain amount of ice on the planet (or less than a certain number of cool areas on the planet) hot “dominoes” will begin to fall for the entire planet.

It’s a real shame that our “experts” are morons and our leaders and the media care only for themselves.

Arctic Ice Subject to Rapid Changes

Here is a pic that shows how rapidly things are changing in the Arctic (source: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/…g/PIA11086 ). Over the span of 2 days, a dramatic amount of new melting ice became visible to NASA's QuikScat satellite scatterometer. Here's what NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has to say about the above image:

"There has been considerable interest in the recent state of Arctic sea ice for scientific research and for operational applications especially along the Northern Sea Route and the Northwest Passage. This pair of sea ice maps was derived from radar data from NASA's QuikScat satellite scatterometer on September 2, 2008 (left panel) and September 5, 2008 (right panel).

QuikScat's unique features make it a powerful tool for mapping sea ice and accurately identifying sea ice conditions. It can distinguish sea ice from open water, differentiate different classes of ice, and compensate for effects of strong winds on ocean surfaces and effects of melt on ice.

In the above images, red areas denote sea ice that was undergoing active melting on the ice surface, magenta areas show sea ice with reduced melt, cyan areas are refrozen sea ice that had some residual wetness from earlier melting, and white areas represent sea ice that had been refrozen for 10 or more days. Ocean areas with less than 15 percent ice cover on the surface are blue, while land surfaces are shown in brown and missing data are depicted in black."

They go onto explain that the red areas on the right are from "Warm air transported by northward winds" that caused: "extensive areas of active melt (red) over a larger region extending from the Barents Sea across the Kara Sea to the Laptev Sea on September 5. That melt event was so large that some parts of it reached as far north as the vicinity of the North Pole."

PLEASE NOTE: The original caption for the image also explains that: "The sea routes may be opened or closed rapidly by transient weather events. Such unstable sea ice conditions in the passages can cause a significant navigation risk."

So, I post this not as "The sky is falling and it's because of Climate Change!" kind of post but rather a post that says: "Whoa, that's some serious flux! A bit of warm air and voila, instant Arctic Sea Routes--that's kinda scary that it can happen so quickly." Still a sign of Climate Change, but it's not the sign you might expect.

I almost think it's more important to note that instability is sometimes worse than stability regardless of the effect. In this case, we don't know what's going on up there. At least, that's what it seems like to me.

Mobile post sent by thepete using Utterz.  Replies.

This is Some Weird Weather in LA

So, Los Angeles is the land golden sunshine, right? Well, for the past week or two it's been the land of oppressive heat. At 11:30pm last night we came out of a movie theater to discover that it was still hot and humid outside. I checked the temp online when I got home and it said it was 80 degrees. It felt hotter than that since I was just short of sweating while doing absolutely nothing to warrant it.

The weird thing was that, before we went to the movie, we noticed flashes in the clouds off in the distance. At first we assumed it was fireworks but why would there be fireworks on the 22nd of July? Then, the flashing got bigger and brighter and, we assumed, closer. It had to be lightning. But we heard no thunder.

Weird.

After the movie, the skies were clear.

Then, this morning I wake up to discover overcast skies. Don't worry--it's still sweltering in TheApartment, but at least it looks like it might rain, even if the forecast doesn't call for it. There are some rainclouds in the area, according to wunderground.com, but I doubt we'll see any actual rain. Which is sad, because we could really use it. It was in the hundreds in the valley last week, from what I heard. I had also heard something about a flash storm that just appeared over Orange County last week. There was some minor flooding, but everyone was OK.

So, weird weather in LA...

I do hear faint rumblings of thunder... perhaps it's just the sound waves from last night's silent lightning catching up to us? ;)

Hope the weather is nicer where you are...