First Hurricane Sandy, now Winter Storm Athena for the Eastern U.S.
Winter Storm Warnings are up for Southwest New Jersey, Northern Delaware, and Southeast Pennsylvania, including Philadelphia, PA, where Winter Storm Athena is expected to drop 3 - 5" of snow today through Thursday morning. Slushy accumulations of up to 1" are likely in Baltimore, and non-accumulating snow will fall as far south as Washington, DC. Athena, the season's first Nor'easter and first winter storm to get a name under The Weather Channel's new naming system, is spreading rain and high winds into Southern New Jersey and Eastern Long Island, NY this morning. Winds at buoy 44025, about 40 miles offshore from the coast of Central New Jersey, reached 40 mph, gusting to 49 mph, with a significant wave height of 14', at noon EST. Winds at Nantucket, MA have gusted as high as 54 mph this morning. Athena is building a storm surge that has already reached 2.2' at Atlantic City and 1.8' at New York City as of noon EST. A storm surge of 2 - 3.5' is likely along the section of coast most heavily damaged by Sandy's storm surge, and battering waves up to 20' high will cause moderate beach erosion along much of the New Jersey and New York shoreline. The storm surge will cause minor to moderate flooding during this afternoon's high tide cycle near 1 pm EST, and again at the next high tide, near 1 am EST Thursday morning. Fortunately, the high tides this week will be some of the lowest of the month, since we are midway between the new moon and full moon. Wind gusts from Athena will likely reach 50 mph along the coasts of New Jersey and Southern Long Island, NY, and could hit 60 mph on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. I expect that Athena's winds, rains, and wet, heavy snows will cause up to 50,000 new power outages today. As of early Wednesday morning, 676,000 customers were still without power in the wake of Hurricane Sandy (down from a peak of 8.5 million customers.)
Figure 1. Winter Storm Athena as seen at 9:01 am EST November 7, 2012. Image credit: NOAA/GSFC.
Figure 2. Predicted storm surge at Sandy Hook, NJ, for Winter Storm Athena, from the experimental Extratropical Storm Surge model, run by NOAA's Meteorological Development Laboratory. This model used winds from this morning's 6Z (1 am EDT) run of the GFS model. The peak storm surge (yellowish-brown line) is predicted to be 3.4', occurring Wednesday evening. High tide (green line) occurs near 1 pm Wednesday afternoon, resulting in a peak storm tide of approximately 7.2' around 1 pm Wednesday (black line). For comparison, Sandy delivered a 8.6' storm surge to Sandy Hook before their tide gauge failed, with the storm tide reaching 13.2' above MLLW (Mean Lower Low Water.)
The decision to name Athena
The Weather Channel announced in October that they would begin naming winter storms this year, in an effort to aid in raising awareness and reduce the risks the public faces. One of the main criteria for naming a storm is its impact on populated areas; the meteorology of the storm may not get it named, if the storm doesn't affect a populated area. If Hurricane Sandy had not devastated the region of coast being affected by today's Winter Storm Athena, it may not have gotten a name. With so many people still under recovery efforts even well inland, the combination of heavy, wet snow and wind prompted the decision to name Athena. The models have been trending towards more cold air getting pulled into this system, so it is possible Athena could drop heavier snows than currently advertised. The National Weather Service will not be referring to today's Nor'easter as "Athena". They put out this internal directive: "The NWS does not use named winter storms in our products. Please refrain from using the term Athena in any of our products."
Here are the peak wind gusts from Athena as of 11 am EST on Wednesday, November 7, 2012:
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 — Blog Index
Looking like the Northeast coastline is in for some very dreary weather for the next two days. The beaches up there will take a long time to recover from this one two punch mother nature gave.
Agreed. Will be interesting to see where that band will setup and just how intense Athena gets...
after this event we in the eastern half will get a nice warm up
my local weather office
forecasting highs in the 60's maybe
starting on weekend and taking us into next week
"The price of corporate servitude"? Really? ;-)
3:06 PM GMT on November 07, 2012
Jeff Masters
In that case, it is something that should have been negotiated ahead of time. I believe public services; whether supplied by public agencies, or as a corporate service, should be coordinated in the public interest. There's a lot of information out there, and without wanting to restrict first amendment rights, its incumbent on businesses or the public agencies that provide actionable information to the public to ensure the message that they are getting is not confusing.
Of course you do, your an employee of TWC now or you have to agree with them cause they gave you a whole bunch of $$$ for your website.
Also it all depends on how many subscribers TWC has in effected areas. Also most of the areas that will be impacted by this Nor'easter are more worried about getting there power/cable/gas on than to tune into TWC. My guess is these people will get there information from local radio which will not use "Athena" but just Nor'easter or Storm.
Goodnight all. Stay well, Stay safe and warm all those in the area this Nor'easter.
Cheers
Really, Neo. Jeff has to use a marketing strategy now in his summaries. That's science?...nope, not in my books. Does it add information that helps the public..au contraire, it risks confusing them.
I think it will be remembered as the nor'easter after "Super-Storm Sandy" not as "Athena"
I do think its a step in the right direction. It's not like we have a system that is currently in place right now to be confused with another. We need something that can be used as an easy tool to help bring awareness to people in an affected area that would help minimize damage, give people time to plan accordingly, and in the end help save lives.
If NWS was involved it would give TWC's new "idea" some credibility.
Personally i believe NWS should implement this idea..
They do after all name our tropical storms,not TWC..
None the less,i hope the effects are minimal with this storm..
Thanks again..
IMO, what they could/ should have done is name them with "numbers". i,e. "winter storm 1", then 2, 3...etc etc.
THat would have distinguished them more clearly from tropical systems.
What they also could do to go in tandem with this is develop a winter storm scale similar to the saffir simpson type scale for the numbered winter storms/ nor'easters.
I like the named winter storms also. Hopefully since the names are quite different than the more conventional tropical system names, people will be able to differentiate between the two.
List of storm names from Dr. Master's blog Link
When is the last time you saw a tropical weather system named Ukko, Freyr, or Gandolf???
They are using the term "Winter Storm" before the name of the system, just like with the tropical systems they have "tropical storm" or "hurricane". As long as you use the prefix there should not be any confusion...
Do they have a commercial "weather channel" name their winter systems or is there a Met. org. for that???
Anyone??
i believe most people get their weather off the weather channel in the states, and don't much listen to radio at all anymore.
trying too find the blog dr m did on that so you can look at it but I cant find it it would have evere thing you need too no
Try this..
This is to get confusing. Have we not already had Winter Storm Adam (Clipper in North Dakota) or was that designated by a seperate entity. If we have two different entities designating storms, ooooo the confusion
here the blog
Link
from wikipedia:
Inspired by the practice of the U.S. National Weather Service to assign names to hurricanes and typhoons, a student at the Free University of Berlin (FU), Karla Wege, suggested in 1954 that all high- and low-pressure systems affecting Europe should be given names in order to make tracking the systems simpler. Lows were given female names and highs male names.[3][4] This practice was soon adopted by the German media.
In 1998, the system changed to alternating male and female names for highs and lows each year. In November 2002, the Adopt-a-Vortex scheme was started, which allows members of the public to buy names that will then be assigned to storms during each year. The money raised by this is used by the meteorology department to maintain weather observations at the FU.[3]
The FU names became gradually known across Europe through the media. Even though these are not sanctioned by any official organizations, like the World Meteorological Organization, they are commonly used. However, a storm may still be named differently in different country. For instance, the Norwegian weather service also names independently notable storms that affect Norway.[5]
Although I'm not in favor of the practice unless its picked up by NWS, and some criteria are developed, I do like the "adopt a vortex" idea.
People do listen to radios in their cars.
There was also this little storm called 2012 Presidential Election... :)
The head of the European bank was underscoring the weakness of the European economy, and the pending fiscal cliff have driven stocks down.
Uh...no.
And soon we'll have to endure hearing about fall storms (to coincide with the new TV season) that will be named after new shows: Autumn Storm Revolution, etc.
I'm so sick of all this marketing the weather, and it's sad to see Wunderground being sucked into it all. To paraphrase Dylan, "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the money blows."
Thanks for that Progster,
Helps me understand the way they implemented their system through a neutral university format.
I'm dissapointed we in the States didn't utilize our NWS and went commercial with the idea..
There must be a reason..but why..kinda bugs me.
G'morning TA,
I hope you realize that not all bloggers here are"Guy's"
And Dr. Masters brought up the subject of winter storm naming so it's out here for discussion..
Not trying to argue with with you..just sayin'.. :)
Hot Wind Warning?
Arguing over naming storms, arguing over who won president...
Welcome to "The Divided States of America"
There are now 43 days till 12-21-12
I am in the exact same area and I've been checking the NWS all morning. It looks like all we have for the moment is a wind advisory, which could be bad news for tree and power crews (but sounds a lot less terrifying than last week all the same!) and some mixed precip. Fingers crossed that we don't get anything worse!
All the best to the people in the wake of this ...
If Athena wasn't a nor'easter she should have been a good sign for the new presidentship. Wiki: "Athena is the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, just warfare, mathematics, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, and skill." Good luck to everyone abroad!
Viewing: 1 - 51
Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 — Blog Index