Irene's rains heaviest on record in Vermont; Tropical Storm Katia forms
Record flooding continues in the Northeast from Irene's torrential rains. Hardest hit was Vermont, where heavy rains in the weeks prior to Irene's arrival had left soils in the top 20% for moisture, historically. Irene dumped 5 - 8 inches of rain over large sections of Vermont, with a peak of 11.23" at Mendo. The reading from Mendo was the greatest single-day rainfall in Vermont's history, according to wunderground's weather historian Christopher C. Burt, beating the 9.92" that fell at Mt. Mansfield on 9/17/1999 during the passage of Tropical Storm Floyd. The 13.30" that fell on East Durham, NY during Irene was just shy of New York State's all-time 1-day rainfall record: 13.70" at Brewster on 9/16/1999, from Tropical Storm Floyd.
Figure 1. Wunderphotographer 43BJAGER recorded this image of a house in Sharon, Vermont, that started out the week on the other side of this underpass.
According to the final Hurricane Irene summary from the NWS, the storm dropped 20" of rain in two locations, one in North Carolina and one in Virginia. Here are the highest rain amounts from the hurricane for each state:
Virginia Beach, VA: 20.40"
Jacksonville, NC: 20.00"
East Durham, NY: 13.30"
Freehold Twp, NJ: 11.27"
Mendon, VT: 11.23"
Ellendale, DE: 10.43"
New Hartford, CT 10.15"
Baxter St. Park, ME: 9.91"
Savoy, MA: 9.10"
Lafayette, PA: 8.82"
Pinkham North, NH: 7.33"
Warren, RI: 5.37"
Tropical Storm Katia forms
Tropical Storm Katia formed this morning in the far Eastern Atlantic off the coast of Africa. Katia will be in a moist, low wind shear environment with ocean temperature 1 - 2°C above the threshold needed to support a hurricane, and should be able to intensify to major hurricane strength when it passes to the north of the Lesser Antilles Islands 5 - 6 days from now. It is possible that some of the outer spiral bands of the storm might bring heavy rain squalls to the northern Lesser Antilles, but it would be a surprise if the core of the storm passed through the islands. The long term fate of Katia is unknown. Dr. Bob Hart's Historical Tropical Cyclone Probability web page suggests shows that tropical storms in Katia's current position have a 19% chance of hitting North Carolina, a 16% chance of hitting Canada, an 11% chance of hitting Florida, and a 47% chance of never hitting land.
Figure 2. The morning run of the GFS Ensemble prediction. The ensemble prediction was done by taking a lower-resolution version of the GFS model and changing the initial distributions of temperature, pressure, and humidity randomly by a few percent to generate an ensemble of 20 different computer projections of where Katia might go. The operational (highest-resolution) version of the GFS model (white line) is usually more accurate, but the ensemble runs give one an idea of the uncertainty in the forecast.
Katia is the 11th named storm this year, and comes a full twelve days before the half-way point of the Atlantic hurricane season. Climatologically, September 10 marks the half-way point. A typical hurricane season has just 10 - 11 named storms, so we've already had a whole season's worth of storms before reaching the half-way point. At this rate, 2011 will see 25 named storms, making it the 2nd busiest season on record, behind 2005. Katia's formation date of August 30 puts 2011 in 5th place for earliest date of arrival of the season's 11th storm. Only 2005, 1995, 1936, and 1933 had an earlier 11th storm.
Gulf of Mexico development possible late this week
Several of our best computer models for predicting formation of tropical cyclones, the GFS and ECMWF, are predicting that an upper level pressure interacting with a tropical wave now over the the Western Caribbean could combine to spawn a tropical depression in the Gulf of Mexico late this week or early next week. The formation location is likely to be off the coast of Louisiana or Texas, but the track of the system is hard to predict at this point.
Figure 3. Portlight volunteer Thomas Hudson clears a driveway yesterday in Hollywood, Maryland.
Portlight disaster relief effort in Maryland
Hurricane Irene heavily damaged the town of Hollywood, Maryland, when a tornado cut off electric power, water, and phone service. Portlight and Team Rubicon volunteers arrived before emergency personnel, after following up on a local tip. What they found was an isolated area whose plight was unknown to the larger community. Most residents were trapped at their homes by heavy debris. Portlight and Team Rubicon worked for two days to clear paths to each address, extract vehicles from debris, and cut down trees that constituted safety hazards. Portlight also instructed local residents how to operate and maintain chainsaws and safely clear debris. No other volunteer organizations or emergency personnel arrived at any time, and Portlight succeeded in meeting the specific needs of the underserved, unserved, and forgotten. Visit the Portlight blog to learn more; donations are always welcome.
I'll have a new post on Wednesday discussing if the evacuations and media hype surrounding Irene were excessive.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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Don't forget the pepto-bismal either... need that too sometimes.
.
I probably shouldn't say anything...but I think both you and Nea are really good bloggers that help make the site better. It's not right to see one of you saying they don't like the other. Agreeing that everyone has their own political pov or personality quirks, I keep these things private...away from the blogs, especially the main.
nerd
(I don't get it) :(
Has an area of low pressure forming just off the coast of Texas.
The way it always works best for me:
Right click on ignore user
and left click open in new tab.
Scroll down to update list.
when the go to your blog comes up
Close the TAB. You are then back to whee you started.
If you hit F5 at that point, usually it will refresh the page, but sometimes will go to the next set of posts.
Day 3
Day 6 and its still over water umm in the GOMEX
Yes... It has been an interesting day.
The storms that roll off Cuba usually die half way here. Looks like these are crankin' up for a change.
nah,,,that guy got banned
HOW are you and the folks doing? I see you are up to helping other as always. Glad you could come on the blog.
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE HOUSTON/GALVESTON TX
224 AM CDT TUE AUG 30 2011
..RECORD HIGH TEMPERATURE SET AT HOUSTON INTERCONTINENTAL
A RECORD HIGH TEMPERATURE OF 107 DEGREES WAS SET AT HOUSTON
INTERCONTINENTAL YESTERDAY. THIS BREAKS THE OLD RECORD OF 103
DEGREES SET IN 1909. THIS IS THE FOURTH CONSECUTIVE DAY WITH A HIGH
TEMPERATURE RECORD AND THE 39TH 100 DEGREE DAY THIS SUMMER.
..RECORD HIGH TEMPERATURE SET AT HOUSTON/HOBBY AIRPORT
A RECORD HIGH TEMPERATURE OF 103 DEGREES WAS SET AT HOUSTON/HOBBY
AIRPORT YESTERDAY. THIS BREAKS THE OLD RECORD OF 99 DEGREES SET IN
1998. THIS WAS THE 13TH DAY THIS SUMMER WITH A TEMPERATURE OF 100
DEGREES OR HIGHER.
'sup, dude?! When ya comin' back through this way?
Case in point, there's folks out there who pay for Joe Bastardi hype.
Couled be sooner, but right now Next summer... I came thru a couple of months ago, but we had to make driving time...
Got another load of clothes and things for you piling up as well!
No reason.
2011AUG30 234500 3.6 997.5 57.0 3.6 3.8 3.8 NO LIMIT OFF OFF -67.10 -66.46 UNIFRM N/A N/A 12.88 36.16 FCST MSG2 44.1
Grothar how many Hrs out is that?
What is the TS showing up in the NAM model going to do?
It is not showing up in other models or is it?
At the very least, it could be an indicator that this system will be a slow-moving one.
Link or info. please. Dropped ours this year, will probably become a magnet now.
Which supports a 55 knot. system....Will likely be higher by 11PM though.
Yes, a group of discerning, open-minded, intelligent viewers. It's not a huge group, but what they lack in numbers they make up for in desirability to advertisers.
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW ORLEANS LA
530 PM CDT TUE AUG 30 2011
THE NEXT THING IN THE OFFING IS POSSIBLY EXTRA OR ACTUALLY TROPICAL
IN NATURE. IT DOES NOT MATTER TOO MUCH WHICH CATEGORY WE GIVE IT
SINCE WIND SPEED IS WIND SPEED REGARDLESS. WE WILL BEGIN TO SHOW AN
UPWARD BUMP IN WIND SPEEDS OVER THE COASTAL WATERS TOWARD THE
WEEKEND. A STRONG TROPICAL WAVE OVER THE WESTERN CARIBBEAN WILL
COLLIDE WITH A STALLED FRONT OVER THE CENTRAL GULF. THIS WILL
ACTIVATE THE FRONT TO MOVE BACK TO THE NORTH. AN UPPER TROUGH DIGS
SLIGHTLY OVER THE MID-WEST THEN LIFTS LEAVING THE GULF LOW BEHIND AS
A MID AND UPPER LEVEL HIGH BUILDS OVER IT. THIS WILL CAUSE THE LOW
TO DRIFT AS STEERING CURRENTS WEAKEN. THE MAJOR IMPACTS EXPECTED AT
THIS TIME IS WIND SPEEDS OVER THE COASTAL WATERS...A HIGHER
POTENTIAL FOR FLOODING RAINFALL...COASTAL FLOODING...AND TROPICAL
WATERSPOUTS/TORNADIC SPINUPS.
Really, share that link... Citizens charged me $9000 this year. I don't have a choice at the moment.
I still think in the crosshairs is the best place to be this far out but we have been there for 2 days now, 2 more days and I will be worried.
Federated National Insurance Company. Located in Ft. Lauderdale. They include Loss of Use...which I could of used during Wilma.
I saw that as well. All I can say to that (being from Houston) is man its been baking here. If this rainmaker the models are predicting doesn't give us any relief and we go through september with well below avg rainfall, we will have some problems this winter into spring (whatever spring Houston has ha!).
This has been quite a crazy year though, especially having temperatures in the teens in Houston in February and then cranking out the hottest year ever recorded thus far, and probably one of the driest. All I can imagine is a flood is on the horizon. This coming week/weekend will be very interesting to say the least!
Yea kind of agree with you but which pattern was not complicated so far this year?
Well, that explains the wobbly stall all the models display, there's a front in the way.
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