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Slow-Moving Storm Producing Torrential Rains across Northern Queensland!

Written by Team Morecast

An upper low drifting slowly across northern Queensland has a history of producing major flooding. As of Saturday morning, it’s still producing heavy rains over western parts of the state. These are less densely populated but more arid areas sensitive to these record rains. Here’s a select list of rainfall totals over the last several days:

 

Queensland Rainfall Totals (since 28-February):

Bluewater: 516 mm

Mt. Margaret: 509 mm

Stony Creek: 441 mm

Deeragun: 420 mm

Pallarenda: 342 mm

Townsville: 263 mm

 

A tap of rich tropical moisture from the Gulf of Carpentaria is to blame for the prolonged heavy rain threat. The upper low is expected to drift slowly and erratically over western Queensland and perhaps eastern Northern Territory, dropping additional heavy rains over the inland deserts through the next several days (see above). It could also help fuel a severe storm threat further southeast later this weekend. Check morecast.com and the Morecast app for the latest forecast details for your location!

 

Nor’Easter Storm Wreaking Havoc From Mid-Atlantic to New England!

Written by Team Morecast

A powerful late-season winter storm spun up quickly off the U.S. Eastern Seaboard late Thursday into Friday, leading to heavy snows over the interior, flooding for the coast, and damaging winds throughout the region. The storm is still pounding portions of the Northeast as of Friday evening but here are a few of the impacts so far:

 

Highest Wind Gusts:

Washington, DC (Dulles): 67 mph (108 kph)

New York, NY (JFK): 63 mph (101 kph)

Providence, RI: 64 mph (103 kph)

Boston, MA: 60 mph (97 kph)

 

Millions have been reported without power thanks to fallen trees and power lines. Major bridges such as the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York City have been forced to close. These strong east to northeast winds are also pushing sea water onshore, leading to major surge flooding, especially along the coast of Massachusetts. Very heavy rainfall of up to three inches is contributing to high water issues.

The major cities are just warm enough to be spared snow and ice accumulation. However, interior sections, especially the mountains, are seeing a crippling combination of winds and heavy, wet snow. Storm totals will likely exceed three feet in some areas with prolonged blizzard conditions. In the words of the National Weather Service, this is going to be “one to remember!” Rely on morecast.com and the Morecast app for the latest forecast details for your location!

 

Winter Ends With Record Warmth, Dryness for Southwest & High Plains

Written by Meteo Expert Josef Lukas

Meteorological winter ended this week as February came to a close.

Preliminary data from the Southeast Regional Climate Center shows that across the Southwest U.S. many stations experienced either their warmest or their driest winter on record.

For example, Los Angles International Airport was +2.14 F above average during the December-February period that defines meteorological winter. That value is enough to qualify as the warmest anomaly in the station’s 74 year history. Elsewhere, several other stations in southern California and across the Southwest broke records for winter warmth.

There were no stations in the contiguous U.S. that experienced their coldest winter on record.

Precipitation-wise, record dryness was observed from northeast New Mexico out into central Kansas. It was so dry across portions of southwestern Kansas that Garden City actually went through meteorological winter without recording any measurable precipitation.

To the southeast of the record dryness was a zone of much higher precipitation. Dallas, Texas and areas around Little Rock, Arkansas experienced their wettest winter period on record. Records at these observation station go back 44 years and 42 years, respectively. The stripe of above average precipitation continued northeastward to Pittsburgh, which saw its wettest winter since at least 1948.

Superstorm Sandy: A $70 Billion Storm

Written by Meteo Expert Josef Lukas

October 29th, 2017 will mark the 5th anniversary of Superstorm Sandy making landfall in southern New Jersey. Sandy had wide reaching impacts to the eastern half of the U.S. 24 states were directly affected in some way.

All totaled, Sandy’s cost to the U.S. is approximately $70 billion. This ranks as the second costliest weather & climate disaster on record. A closer look at the mainland U.S. impacts from Sandy are below.

Storm Surge

The hardest hit areas from Sandy included the New Jersey and New York coastlines. This is largely due to the immense storm surge that piled up against the coast when the Superstorm took its left-handed turn into New Jersey.

The highest recorded storm surge of 12.65 feet occurred at Kings Point, NY which is on the north shore of the Long Island Sound. Further, a storm surge of almost 3 feet or greater was observed in every East Coast state from Florida to Maine.

As is typical in many strong tropical cyclones, the storm surge is the biggest contributor to the cost of a storm.

According to the National Hurricane Center’s recap of Sandy, the Metropolitan Transit Authority in NYC reported that 8 subway tunnels were flooded as a result of storm surge. The estimated cost to repair damages to the tunnels is $5 billion. Furthermore, NYC estimates that Sandy will cost the entire city $19 billion mostly because of storm surge damage.

Winds

The most far-reaching impact from Sandy was the storm’s wind field. Before Sandy made landfall in New Jersey, tropical storm force winds reached a diameter of more than 1,000 miles. That is approximately the distance from Washington DC to Jacksonville, FL.

Additionally after Sandy made landfall, tropical storm force wind gusts were observed as far away as Wisconsin and Illinois!

Sandy’s winds were blamed for about 160,000 power outages in Florida, and several million outages farther north across the Mid-Atlantic states.

Rain

Once Sandy emerged from eastern Cuba, heavy rain pushed northward through the Bahamas as well as eastern Florida. As the storm underwent a transition from a tropical to non tropical system, the storm grew in size which helped push rain bands inland across the Southeast coast.

As is typical with systems of tropical origins that reach the mid latitudes, the heaviest rain was along and to the left of the storm track. Since Sandy took an unusual left-hand turn into New Jersey, this placed most of the heaviest rainfalls along and to the south of Sandy’s track. The exception was across interior New England where Atlantic moisture was rung out across the higher terrain of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont.

The combination of strong winds and flooding from heavy rain caused more than $30 million in damages across Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania.

Snow

The icing on the cake for Sandy’s status as a Superstorm was the injection of arctic air from a polar disturbance, which aided in pulling the storm towards the US coast. As precipitation spread westward across the Mid-Atlantic from the coast plain, it fell into an increasingly cold environment changing the rain over to snow across the Appalachians.

One to three feet of snow pasted much of the higher terrain above 2,500 feet from the southern Appalachians northward to southwestern Pennsylvania. The weight of the snow caused a number of structures to collapse as well as thousands to lose power.