| Day | Night | Total | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hours | Days | Avg | Hours | Days | Avg | Hours | Days | Avg | |
| Jan | 0.00 | 0 | 0.00 | 2.00 | 1 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 1 | 2.00 |
| Feb | 0.00 | 0 | 0.00 | 2.00 | 1 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 1 | 2.00 |
| Mar | 0.00 | 0 | 0.00 | 7.00 | 3 | 2.33 | 7.00 | 3 | 2.33 |
| Apr | 0.00 | 0 | 0.00 | 8.25 | 2 | 4.13 | 8.25 | 2 | 4.13 |
| May | 1.25 | 3 | 0.42 | 16.00 | 5 | 3.20 | 17.25 | 7 | 2.46 |
| Jun | 0.00 | 0 | 0.00 | 4.00 | 1 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 1 | 4.00 |
| Jul | 3.50 | 4 | 0.88 | 14.00 | 5 | 2.80 | 17.50 | 8 | 2.19 |
| Aug | 2.75 | 7 | 0.39 | 6.50 | 2 | 3.25 | 9.25 | 8 | 1.16 |
| TOTAL | 7.50 | 14 | 0.54 | 59.75 | 20 | 2.99 | 67.25 | 31 | 2.17 |
| Observing Location | P84 | ||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Observational Period | 1700-1745 EDT | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Atmospheric Conditions |
| ||||||||||||||||||||
| Instruments | Celestron C70 Mini Mak spotting scope
| ||||||||||||||||||||
| Observing Party | Charlie Ridgway |
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The 0500 EDT forecast has just come in and Irene is now a minimal hurricane off Cape May, NJ. The current track takes it onshore up most of the Jersey coast which should fort her weaken it before it reaches the City.
The track has moved west overnight and landfall is now predicted in the Rockaways, the farthest west that it has been.
Forward speed has increased with every advisory after passing Cape Hatteras, as is normal. That is good for us on the left side of the storm as forward speed is subtracted from rotational speed and results in less damage. The opposite is true on the right of the track so Nassau will be in worse shape than us. As I write this Central Park is reporting 20 mph winds rather than the 50 mph that was forecast.
Most of the rain is on the left side of the storm though so if we aren't experiencing flooding yet it is to be expected.
We have already had 2-3 inches of rain within the past 24 hours. That isn't as much rain as we were supposed to have gotten.
And high tide at the battery is at 0810 EDT, shortly before the passage of the eye, so we will see a lot of extra water being blown into the Long Island Bight causing coastal flooding and beach erosion.
Barometric pressure is very low from Georgia up through Massachusetts.
0615 EDT
I just got a news flash from CNN that Irene came onshore at 0530 EDT in New Jersey near Little Egg Inlet. That is roughly on the predicted track.
I - 1.6
Irene is about 1.6 hours from NYC. The intermediate advisory puts it 40 miles to the SSW moving at 25 mph with a continued increase in forward speed forecast.
It is still a minimal hurricane with winds at 75 mph. Our winds are averaging 16 mph with a couple of gusts near 59 mph but even most of the gusts have remained below tropical storm force. Hurricane force winds are supposed to extend out 125 miles from the center and tropical storm force winds 320 miles. The Central Park weather station must live a very sheltered life. The JFK forecast shows the winds peaking out at 48 mph from 1100 EDT to 1400 EDT and the Central Park forecast has also been downgraded to a wind peak of 48 mph at noon.
The track has shifted farther west and now crosses Sandy Hook, NJ, Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, Queens, and City Island. I wondered if that would happen when they shifted the track onshore through NJ.
And Tropical Storm Jose has just formed near Bermuda. Forming that high up and that for out it will probably not pose any threat to us. And indeed it is forecast to be short lived weakening tomorrow.
0935 EDT
Citing NOAA as it source CNN is reporting that Irene has been downgraded to a Tropibal Storm with maximum winds of 65 mph as of 0930 EDT. They also day that the storm has arrived in NYC but they don't say where or when it made landfall. It has all but stopped raining here an I am thinking about running over to the North River to see what it looks like. Both rivers are reported to have overblown their banks and flooded parts of Manhattan.
I did go out and walked down to Pier 84.
Times Square was empty.
I walked across to Pier 84 and on many blocks I was the only person. I only had three vehicles pass me by going east and two of them were police cars and the other a FDNY Rescue company out on a run.
You are taking your life in hour hands crossing with the light at the West Side Highway but not today. There was no one on the highway and I crossed against the light.
These two fuel lighters had just tied up to the north side of Pier 84 when I arrived. Their sterns said they were out of Wilmington, DE. I asked if they had run up here in front of the storm but the captain said that they are from Elisabeth, NJ and that their base is 4' under water so they had come up here for safe harbor until the storm passes. He had been told that the storm was still approaching and he should stay at the pier. He said that the black lighter out in the center of the river was one of theirs and they had to keep an eye on it because it was an old boat.
The water was higher under the pier than it should have been.
I continued walking north along the riverfront park eventually making my way all the way up to 61 St. Somewhere in the low 50s I came across this platform hanging out over the water with benches. There were a bunch of foreign kids, French I think, there putting their shoes on when I arrived. I guess they had had a photo opp.
Up in a more posh section of town there is a group of statues created by students at the Art Students' League. This one of the androgynous figure with the flowing hair seemed particularly apropos. The wind was picking up by then and its hair was even blowing in the correct direction.
Back at Times Square things were starting to get back to normal. There were more tourists doing the normal tourist things.
Then down on Broadway at 44 St I ran into these two rugby teams out in the middle of the promenade having a scrum. The guys in blue are the French team and early this morning they were on The Weather Channel body surfing down the street in the rain. Mostly now they were trying to stay on their feet on the slick painted macadam.
The 2300 hurricane advisory is in. It says the storm will still be a hurricane when it passes here at 1100 EDT ob Sunday. But the probabilities attached to that forecast say it has a 48% chance of being a tropical storm and only a 25% probability of being even a Cat 1 hurricane.
The track has been moving back and forth between the City line in the west and Babylon in the east. This forecast they have it back at Babylon.
But the error cone is still large meaning they are confident that it will be somewhere between Allentown, PA and Cape Cod, MA.
There are some nice satellite images of the storm.
The mayor has ordered a mandatory evacuation for all coastal areas of the city. The order covers part of my zip code, but not my part. The NY Times says in an article on their web page that the order affects 370,000 people, but in a sidebar they say 250,000. It is still a lot of people whose houses are supposed to be empty by 1700 EDT Saturday. And there will be no mass transit for them to leave on after 1200 EDT Saturday. The forecast for Central Park indicates peak winds of only 69 mph at 1100 EDT Sunday.
The JFK Airport forecast puts the winds at 74 mph, the threshold for a hurricane.
So the City s taking a one size fits all approach rather than inconveniencing only those people at greatest risk.
When you look at the larger picture this major event is really pretty insignificant. And it is necessary.
I - 24
The hurricane is supposed to be here in 24 hours. The wind graph is still showing peak winds at 1100 EDT tomorrow. it has been moving at 15 mph and is supposed to continue that pace and is currently 405 miles away so crunching those numbers puts it here at 1400 EDT tomorrow and indeed the forecast track shows it off Sandy Hook at 1100 EDT tomorrow.
But this is a huge weather system so the arrival of the eye isn't all that important. We are already in the hurricane.
The track has drifted west again bringing it onshore in Nassau County close to the City lint.
The forecast maps still show it as a hurricane at both 1100 and 2300 EDT tomorrow but the associated forecast probabilities say it will more likely be a tropical storm.
We will be seeing tropical storm force winds for sure but we only have a 10% chance of seeing hurricane force winds at that time.
In reviewing the track overlain on the bathymetry I was struck by how closely the track has followed the continental shelf. I would like to see a similar plot of the gulf stream or a plot of the position of the gulf stream and the hurricane center at each forecast advisory time. I think there would be good agreement there.
I - 12
It has finally started raining here and sounds like it is of moderate intensity.
I had a map of the forecast rain total for the storm but can't find it now, have erased the screen capture from my iPad and can't find the original source. As I remember it we were supposed to get 7-8 inches. I did find a set of NOAA maps covering the next 24 hours, but they are not as useful as the map I lost.
We are currently under a Tornado Watch and a Flash Flood Warning.
The track has drifted west and now back east during the day today. It is now calling for landfall on Long Beach, Nassau County, but will probably drift both east and west before it actually gets here. But it appears to be a Nassau County landfall.
The error come is shrinking and now ranges between Parsipony, NJ and Hampton Bays, Suffolk Co.
The forecast still says that it will be a hurricane when it gets here, but the probabilities say it has a 65% likelihood of only being a tropical storm.
The Central Park hourly forecast is still putting the maximum wind at 70 mph at 1100 EDT.
According to the NOAA Wind History chart we haven't seen tropical storm force winds yet.
Here are the maps for the probability of tropical storm force and 55 knot windlass of 2000 tonight (NOAA hasn't updated their graphics yet). We aren't on either of them.
We have a 100% chance of experiencing tropical storm force winds by 0800 tomorrow and a 40%-50% that we will see 50 knot (58 mph) winds then.
At 0800 EDT tomorrow the storm is supposed to be off Toms River, NJ.
Satellite Imagery
Barometric Pressure
Here is the map of the midtown evacuation areas. The only one that is currently mandatory is the gold area along the North River. But the police are not going door to door to enforce it.
