Hi Folks - Right now Hurricane Lee is about 750 miles due east of my house, well out to sea. It’s a lovely day here and there’s no enhanced surf. Yet. Nor will ours get very exciting I don’t think. The current hurricane force wind field is almost 200 miles in diameter and the tropical storm force wind field is about 400 miles in diameter. Lee’s a strapping big boy.
NHC’s current thinking is that Lee’s winds will slow down, but the storm won’t shrink much before it collides with the coast of US New England or the Canadian Maritimes areas this weekend. Newfoundland and Labrador would be next in line.
Watches and warnings are already starting to be raised in New England since the storm’s radius is about 1 to 1-1/2 days’-worth of its slow forward progress.
Might get exciting up there in leaf-peeper land. Probably more from insane rain and surf than from severe wind.
Unlike us Floridiots, I bet most folks in New England don’t have very many hurricane websites bookmarked. These are my favorite non-government sites for non-sensationalist hurricane-related commentary and explanation.
Tropical storm watch went up this afternoon for my house. I’m 900 miles away in Chicago, due to land in Providence Friday morning. Not worried about that.
We haven’t gotten whacked since Bob in 1991, we’re waaayyy overdue for a hurricane in SE Massachusetts. Lee so much as twitches we’re going to be in the worst of it, but at least on the good side of the storm.
I’m a big fan of Yale Climate Connections. The blog itself is great, and many of the commenters know their stuff. It does help to have an idea of who is who so you can figure out who to pay attention to. I’ve been following that group since the Weather Underground days.
I’ll add two of my favorite sites.
For one-stop shopping and links to just about everything, Mike’s Weather Page is good. It’s an eye chart and you kinda have to look for what you need, but the links are almost always there. Plus, if you follow him on Facebook, Youtube, or other medias, you can see his live discussions. During active times like this, he tends to do a morning (9:19am eastern) and an evening (various times, announced online) report. He is NOT a meteorologist. He’s a hobbyist who pays a lot of attention to tropical weather, and talks about trends and possibilities. So he isn’t a primary source, but he’s a good place to get a feel for “what could this mean” and “why is this moving this way”.
Tropical Tidbits is a great user friendly site to see various computer models and other data. Dr. Levi Cowan is a meteorologist, and the videos on his site tend to be a bit more sciency, in my experience. (As a side note, I remember Levi when he was in college, back on the Weather Underground blogs, although I’m quite sure he doesn’t remember me. It’s cool to see what he’s done since then.)
Hmm. We lost power for 48 hours over the weekend due to a very localized thunderstorm. Hopefully that got rid of all the trees that were ready to fall anyway.