Nature's Past New Year Shows and Forecast

2011 is coming to an end as New Year's Eve approaches and shortly after the infamous 2012 begins.  Your 2012 forecast is that everything you have seen about the world ending is true.  Just kidding!  Even though the Mayan calender ends on 2012 it is unlikely that the world would end.  What we can look at is how other years have ended and began.  Going all the way back to 1947 where the 1947 New Year's Eve Tornado Outbreak occured.  A year that ones during that time will never forget for the end of 1947 and the beginning of 1948 where 11 tornadoes tore through the Southern U.S. and unfortunately taking 256 lives from entering 1948.  On the bright side, 20 people were spared with injuries to live to tell of the great devastation.  Now moving to a much more recent tornadic event in 2010 when the 2010 New Year's Eve Tornado Outbreak occured in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, and Illinois from Dec. 31 to Jan 1.  As many as 36 tornadoes touched down with the strongest being an EF3.  Unfortunately, 9 lives were lost from this outbreak, but due to the vast advancements on tornado warnings and preparation ONLY 9 lives were lost and not large numbers like in 1947.

Now you are probably expecting a list of blizzards on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day.  Well, as far as recorded history shows there hasn't been any and the same thing goes for significant Nor'easters, but tropical systems is another story.  None have made landfall during this time here in the U.S., but it is always good to notify that hurricanes and tropical storms do exist around that time of the year.  Back in 1954, a storm in the Caribbean Sea developed and eventually became a hurricane known as Hurricane Alice and passed over the Leeward Islands.  It developed on Dec. 30, 1954 and died of on Jan. 6, 1955.  Almost exactly 51 years later another storm developed on nearly the same day as Hurricane Alice did.  During the historic and memorable 2005 season a storm developed on Dec. 29, 2005 and developed into Tropical Storm Zeta, the 30th named storm of that season which is record for the most tropical cyclones in a hurricane season on record.  Tropical Storm Zeta caused no damage to islands as it was a fish storm.  It eventually died off on Jan. 6, 2006.

It is known that New Year's Eve and New Year's Day are not really recognized as a holiday where great weather events occur, but as you have noticed anything is possible regardless of what time of the year it is.  What kind of weather will New York City have when the ball drops to end 2011 and begin 2012?  It is a far forecast, but for those who want to travel to Manhattan and stand in Time Square to see the beautiful 11,875 pound, lighted, crystal ball to drop the weather won't be too bad.  So far it is looking to be in the upper 30's when the ball drops at midnight with partly cloudy skies and winds coming from the NW at around 5 mph.  New York City isn't the only location in the U.S. that is dropping something though.  I have read of foods, fruits, musical instruments, leaves, shoes, disco balls, animals, flowers, jugs, sea creatures, beach balls, and many, many more things to drop at midnight in a number of locations around the U.S.  If you want to know more about it and what they are, go to the following link and find out.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_objects_dropped_on_New_Year's_Eve

The Spirit of Christmas Past

A Merry Christmas to everyone of all nationalities and all locations.  Some of us had a beautiful white Christmas with falling snow and/or snow on the ground and some of us didn't, but since this year what other sort of weather has people encountered for Christmas?  Not in any order of year, but in type of events that will be mentioned of the spirits of Christmas past.  Christmas in 1982 is known as the Christmas 1982 Tornado Outbreak for people in the Central-Southeastern U.S. as a system spawned 18 tornadoes from Dec. 23-25 with 3 lives lost.  Luckily, tornadic events are not very common around Christmas time, but blizzard events are a little more common.  The North American Blizzard of 1947 sprawled snow all over the Northeast Region of the U.S. dropping as much as 26 inches of snow in Manhattan at Central Park.  Snow started falling on Dec. 25 and steadily and silently fell through Dec. 26.  As harmless as it sounds it left devastation behind by taking away 77 lives.  A much more recent blizzard event was the December 2010 North American Blizzard.  Considered as a historic blizzard dropped as much as 34 inches of snow in and around New Jersey.  It affected the entire Atlantic Coastline with showers and thunderstorms in Florida to blizzard conditions in the Northeast.  This was one of a few storms that had the rare phenomena of thunder snow in it.  Was Jim Cantore there I'm not sure, but if he was he probably would have reacted like he did in early 2011 when he experienced it in Chicago. 

Amongst the nearly 3 feet of snow that was dropped and the howling winds that came along with it, this blizzard caused a pretty penny worth of damage rounding to $60 million and left behind 7 to perish.  It originated on Dec. 22 and didn't finish causing havoc for the U.S. until the 29th.  Other notable storms was the Christmas 1994 Nor'easter that formed Dec. 22 and ended on the 26th.  No snow or ice was reported from this storm, but it intensified rapidly to an amazing 970mb storm creating problems from the Southeast to the New England area.  Southeast experienced heavy rainfall with over 5 inches of rainfall and windy conditions along the Atlantic Coastline causing massive beach erosion from the Carolinas to Massachusetts.  More than $20 million of damage was caused by it and 2 lives were lost, but luckily no other lives were taken.

This is a list of some of the most memorable weather events on Christmas.  As weather recording has only be going on for abour 150 years for most places a lot of events cannot be taken into account and ones that were small but leaving big impacts on families were included either as they hard to track down.  I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas regardless of where you are.

City Forecast Discussion: Erie, Pennsylvania

A city that sits in the Northeast right on Lake Erie is the beautiful city of Erie.  A peaceful city with an old-fashion sense to it with beautiful country sides and beautiful neighborhoods.  Too bad the weather cannot be explained the same way.  Erie is as tricky as Miami and Juneau for forecasting since it sits right next to a body of water.  Every factor in the air plays an important role in determining how warm, cool, windy, dry, or wet it will be.  The temperatures for the city is highly dependent on the wind.  An important thing to keep in mind for Erie is that the highest sustained wind for each day is rather uncommon to go below 10 mph.  If the wind blows from the land to Erie it will warm up and cool off as the rest of the land warms and cools.  When the wind does this it has been noticed that Erie will reach its warmest and coolest days.  If the wind blows from Lake Erie then its a different animal.  Erie will have more of a small temperature change with winds blowing from the lake since before winter really kicks in it stays unfrozen.  From experience, there was a day where the high reached 41 and the low was 38 with the wind coming off the water that entire day.  That is only a 3 degree temperature change for an entire day.  Quite crazy.  Clouds were in the area, but the clouds primarily affect the temperature of the city if the wind is coming from the land blowing towards Erie.  Clouds have little affect when the wind is from the lake.

Precipitation amount is just as challenging as the high and low for Erie.  It boils down to how far north or south the low pressure system is, how cold the air is, and the direction it is moving with respect to wind.  Because of Erie's location it typically gets a piece of most systems that near it, but sometimes a low pressure system may not be near it and they will still receive rain or snow.  How is that?  An interesting phenomenan called lake effect.  It can be in the form of rain or snow, but most of the time it will be in the form of snow.  Snow is a funny and tricky form of precip to forecast for.  Not really in its form, but how much will fall and converting it to liquid.  Typically, you can use a 1:10 ratio meaning for every 1 inch of liquid water there will be 10 inches of snow and vice versa.  This however does not always follow through as it can be as little as 1:5 or as much as 1:50, figuratively speaking.  If this isn't tricky enough then keep in mind that if there were lake effect snow or rain it doesn't mean it will fall over Erie.

Finally, the wind is always hard to predict no matter what city you are in, but Erie is a little different.  Wind from bouys in the lake can be as high as 30 to 40 mph sustained, but just on land it could be 10 to 20 mph all due to friction.  The Erie International Airport is very close to Lake Erie, but there is still enough land to create enough friction with the wind to slow it down some.  For the short period of time that Erie was forecasted for the wind ranged from 13 to 22 mph depending upon how tight of a pressure gradient there is and whether the wind is coming off the water or land.

Overall, very tricky forecast city with the 2 weeks spent on it which allows for high respect for the meteorologists forecasting for the area.  Now Christmas break is in session and will have a resting period until the next forecast city starts in late January.  Here is a hint: It is known as The Big Easy and not located in any county, but another kind of geographic subdivision of a state; well known for a French phrase that occurs on a Tuesday every year before lent starts; and well known for a very famous street that has the same name as a type of whiskey.